Edgy Learning Project

Dr Clare Watkins, Dr James Butler, Dr Ian Jones (St Peter’s Saltley Trust)

Funded by the St Peter’s Saltley Trust and the Susanna Wesley Foundation
University of Roehampton

The Edgy Learning project continues to provide fascinating insights into how faith grows, changes and develops in marginalised and ‘edgy’ spaces.  Working across seven sites engaging with a range of experiences of marginalisation has caused us to develop our approach to participative and collaborative research. In these edgy contexts some people were unfamiliar with, or suspicious of interviews and focus groups.  We responded with new and creative ways of listening and developing conversations. Co-designing workshops around tasks and activities with our local teams and encouraging participants to do their own listening, has resulted in a much broader range of voices contributing to the project than we have seen previously.  Where groups have not had the capacity to meet for a whole day due to constraints such as health, working around shift work, and other life constraints, we have experimented with shorter, more regular reflection meetings. The project is approaching its end and over the next few months we will be sharing what has been learnt about how faith changes and develops, and how theological action research can be carried out in edgy places.