Project lead: Tara Webster-Deakin, Rebecca Woodcock

Our aim was to develop a community of practice and understanding around lived experience, specifically lived experience of mental ill health. We had three key objectives for our work: 

1.      Deepening our understanding of learned and lived experience (LE) 
2.      Developing advocacy skills in local community via community/voluntary groups 
3.      Creation of Commitment to Lived Experience (collaborative activity) 

We brought together a wide range of university researchers and community and voluntary sector partners at two workshops in February and in April 2024. These partners worked with some of the most in need members of our Nottingham community. Together with these community and voluntary partners, we discussed and agreed the themes which best described the challenges and opportunities of working and researching with Lived Experience.  

Nottingham City ranks as 11th out of the 317 districts in England using the Average Score Measure in the Indices of Multiple Deprivation (IMD)¹. 29.8% of children in Nottingham (17,600) are affected by income deprivation. Our community and voluntary partners brought compelling evidence of the impact of this deprivation on the communities with whom they work. 

Through our two workshops, we began to understand what we might offer our community and voluntary partners, and how Nottingham universities could continue to learn from their work. Looking forward, we have begun to build the networks towards enabling and supporting the voices of our community, and our next step is to widen the reach of the Lived Experience pledge for organisations across the region.