What we are learning about policy and influence: Reflections from 2024 and 2025
Part II
The 2025 Gathering: Deepening the Conversations from 2024
In October, our Community of Practice (CoP) session provided a space to discuss systemic barriers and enablers of policy influence. A month later, the 2025 Network Gathering in Inverness explored how these themes play out in practice. Across the discussion tables, we saw how these abstract concepts —policy, evidence, and relationships—are being navigated on the ground every day.
These ideas also connect back to discussions raised at the the 2024 Gathering, showing how questions about evidence, relationships, and policy influence have continued to build across the network over time.
This blog brings these reflections together to explore how our collective thinking about impact has developed over the past two years.
This blog was developed by Lyra Wang and Victoria Bell, MSc in Science Communication and Public Engagement students at the University of Edinburgh, while on placement with Science Ceilidh.
Network Gathering 2025
In October 2025, our Community of Practice (CoP) session focused on policy impact and influence, with participants describing the challenges and possibilities they encounter when trying to bring community evidence into decision-making. The themes from that session—policy, evidence, and relationships—carried through to our latest Network Gathering in Inverness, where they became more specific, grounded and tied to real examples.
On 11 November, thematic tables allowed participants to engage in focused discussions, collate resources, and develop ideas for collaborative action. These groups also explored collective asks for decision-makers and future systemic change.
Across the room, conversations became more grounded in local stories and lived experience. While reflections on policy influence were articulated in diverse ways, the underlying message was clear: community-led research is at its most powerful when it is rooted in real places and supported over time.
Community Knowledge Matters Network Gathering, 11th November 2025, Inverness. Photo Credit: Alexander Williamson.
At the Ethics and Climate table, the need for continuity and care came through clearly. Participants stressed that climate action requires “sustained support for projects, not for just one year” and “long term funding knowledge exchange and mobilisation after research has completed.” They also highlighted the emotional dimension of endings, calling for “support to end projects and programmes well.” These concerns echoed earlier conversations about participatory ethics in the 2024 Gathering, where people focused on consent, privacy and trust. A year later, those ethical questions were being applied more directly to climate work and the responsibility to end projects carefully.
Community Knowledge Matters Network Gathering, 11th November 2025, Inverness. Photo Credit: Alexander Williamson.
The Young People Led Research table highlighted creative, flexible methods that support genuine youth engagement. Participants described how consent must be continuous, with “midway consent reminders to check understanding,” and how framing activities as “challenges” helps participation feel inviting rather than imposed. Tools like “Dixit cards” and outdoor methods such as “snorkelling as a way to gather authentic experiences” illustrated how youth-led research requires methods that prioritise comfort and autonomy. These examples built on our 2024 Gathering, where participatory ethics were first discussed and participants began to reflect on what consent and care look like in practice with young people.
At the 2025 Creative Co-Production table, the conversation centred on accessibility, trust and the value of immediate creative outputs. One participant put it plainly: “Listen to the community opinions.” Others emphasised that creative work needs “funding longevity” to avoid fragmenting relationships. This connected back to previous year reflections on building relationships and recognising that people “do not have relationships with organisations; they have relationships with people.”
“Creative work needs funding longevity to avoid fragmenting relationships.”
−Gathering 2025 participant
The Sustainability and Funding table pushed these insights into the structural realm. Participants spoke candidly about barriers and opportunities, noting that “funders need to collaborate more… join it all up more” and that intermediaries often “translate the systems and processes into different ‘languages’.” In the 2024 edition, people had already called for collaboration over competition and said “we need to see ourselves as not competitors, but as a community.” By 2025, these ideas had become a clearer agenda for how funding systems need to change.
Community Knowledge Matters Network Gathering, 11th November 2025, Inverness. Photo Credit: Alexander Williamson.
At the Community Research Partnerships table, participants contributed direct statements about evidence and validity. Comments such as “community led, not researcher led, has more impact” and “it is not about one voice in the room… but a collective of voices” aligned closely with earlier 2024 conversations on equitable partnerships, where people described this work as “more than co-production” and spoke about “communities being involved as equal partners in funding bids.” Tangible change was also emphasised to be “a common factor” in such partnerships.
The Gathering also reinforced that policy impact begins locally. Examples from the Young People Led Research table, such as “nature workshops facilitated by young people,” showed how change starts through practice. At the Health and Social Care table, participants stressed that “language is key,” especially when prevention and the social determinants of health are at stake. These were reminders that evidence is not only numbers or reports. It is also language, relationships and the experiences people carry.
The importance of trust stood out in every table. Whether people talked about continuous consent, funding longevity, or shared learning, the message was consistent: impact grows from relationships that are built slowly and maintained through care.
Compared with 2024, the tone in the 2025 Gathering had shifted
The year before, many tables focused on naming what needed to change. Participatory ethics conversations emphasised consent, anonymity, and shared power. Public health and social care discussions highlighted a "fragmented and broken" system, calling for community-led and person-centred approaches. At that time, Community Research Partnerships and Funding tables spoke of being "more than co-production," noting that "good will not being good enough" and that trust and risk must be recognised as work that “costs money because it takes time”.
Asking decision-makers to "bring value to community-led research and work with people and communities".
−Gathering 2025 participant
In 2025, the network built on those foundations and spoke more directly about infrastructure, funding models, and the systems required to support community-led research. The gathering felt like a deepening of the 2024 event but was more grounded in place-based challenges, specific stories, and clearer calls for systemic change.
At the Sustainability and Funding table, this surfaced in statements like "If a funder proves it can work, build on that and don’t lose it." Meanwhile, at the Community Research Partnerships table, participants moved beyond simple recognition toward structural change, asking decision-makers to "bring value to community-led research and work with people and communities". The 2024 questions about power and data ownership remained, but they had become more focused on what funders and policymakers must do differently.
Looking Ahead Together
Community led research works because it starts with people and their lived realities.
Across the 2024 and 2025 Network Gatherings, a shared understanding has emerged: community-led research works because it starts with people and their lived realities. In both years, discussions were filled with honesty about fatigue, frustration, and slow systems, but they also carried a sense of persistence and grounded optimism.
Taken together, these conversations show a clear shift from simply seeking recognition for community knowledge toward building the structures that allow it to shape policy consistently. The work ahead is to deepen that momentum and continue creating systems that reflect the knowledge and experience held within the communities themselves.
Once again, thanks to all those who came along to our 2024 and 2025 Gatherings and contributed to the discussions and reflections above.
Read Part I of this blog to see What The Community Network Is Saying About Policy Impact.