Dr Federico Botta shares insights from his team’s collaboration with Exeter Science Centre, which looked to better understand Exeter residents’ views on urban liveability, and was supported by the 2024-25 Engaged and Participatory Research Fund.
Amount of award: £5000
Our project explored how Exeter residents understand and experience urban liveability, with the aim of directly informing future research into cities, mobility and access, focussing on creating inclusive and accessible ways for communities to shape research priorities.
Between January and June 2025, we engaged residents across Exeter to gather insights into what makes neighbourhoods feel liveable, accessible and welcoming. Particular attention was given to transport, access to services, community spaces and the everyday challenges people face as they move through the city. With the funding, we designed and delivered a series of community consultation activities across Exeter, working in close collaboration with Exeter residents and community groups. Across all sessions, we used a range of engagement tools including hands-on mapping, creative exercises, facilitated discussions, voting activities and immersive experiences such as virtual reality and soundscapes. These were designed to encourage participation from people with different access needs and communication styles. We worked closely with local residents, community leaders and participants with lived experience of disability, alongside researchers and engagement specialists from Exeter Science Centre.
The project provided rich, grounded insight into how people experience urban life in Exeter, helping to identify priority areas for future research. Discussions around public transport reliability, affordability, proximity of services and the design of public space directly highlighted research gaps and helped shape emerging research directions around transport inequality, accessibility and inclusive city design.
A key challenge was ensuring the engagement methods were genuinely inclusive and accessible to people with different needs. This was addressed by offering multiple ways to participate (e.g. verbal, written, visual and hands-on activities), working with community partners, and adapting activities for different audiences and settings. Another challenge was in the design of all the activities due to time constraints, for which partnering with Exeter Science Centre has been crucial as they did a fantastic job with this.
Participants were given a platform to share lived experiences and concerns directly with researchers. The sessions created space for open discussion about transport, mobility challenges and inclusion, particularly for disabled residents whose perspectives are often under-heard. Residents also valued seeing their experiences taken seriously as part of university research and appreciated opportunities to influence future work that could affect their city and daily lives.
The project strengthened relationships between the University, Exeter Science Centre and local communities, demonstrating how creative and participatory engagement can bring research and public experience together in meaningful ways and lay foundations for longer-term collaboration. In particular, we found that face-to-face engagement created deeper and more honest conversations, and co-designed activities, as well as small-group discussions produced strong participation and provided valuable insight. Creative tools such as mapping, VR, and visual prompts also helped participants articulate complex experiences. We would be keen to use these approaches again in future work.
Already, the findings from this project are directly informing the next phase of research, focussed on urban accessibility and mobility justice, with accessibility considerations explicitly embedded into research design. We are also seeking further funding to continue working with the same communities, and are keen to deepen our partnerships with both these communities and Exeter Science Centre. In the longer term, we expect this work to lead to more inclusive research practices, better evidence for policymakers, and stronger two-way relationships between researchers and the communities they serve.
Photo by Tao Yuan on Unsplash.