Rooted Pathways: Community-led routes into STEM apprenticeships and careers for Nottingham’s Black and racially minoritised communities

Nottingham offers an important setting for this work. Its industrial heritage includes Raleigh, Boots and Plessey, and the city has growing strengths in advanced manufacturing, medical and digital technologies. It also has a rich history of Black and diasporic communities working in highly skilled technical roles; Raleigh, for example, employed someone from most Windrush-generation African Caribbean households. Nottingham's Black communities have also long created their own supplementary education in response to racism in mainstream schooling. The project will explore how these legacies, including archive and community-held materials, can make local Black STEM histories more visible.

The research will be based around a six-month community residency with Diversify Education & Communities CIC, a non-profit organisation supporting Black African and Caribbean communities in Beechdale and surrounding areas. The researcher will run creative, cross-generational and culturally affirming workshops with participants of Black, African and Caribbean heritage aged 14 and over. Alongside this, analysis of regional recruitment data and interviews with employers and apprenticeship providers will explore participation patterns and organisational practices. Participants' experiences will inform the co-design of resources for young people, STEM employers and apprenticeship providers, which will be evaluated for their contribution to participation, inclusive recruitment and community engagement.

This project has been co-created with and is supported by researchers from the University of Nottingham and Nottingham Trent University, and partners at Diversify Education & Communities CIC. The successful candidate for this project will be enrolled at the University of Nottingham.

Project Aims and Objectives

RQ: How can place-based, community co-developed resources support young Black/minoritised people's access to STEM careers and apprenticeships and more inclusive employer/provider recruitment and community engagement? 

The project objectives are:

1. Investigate how racialised, socioeconomic and place-based inequalities shape young Black and minoritised people's access to and progression within STEM apprenticeships and careers, through participatory research and analysis of regional workforce and recruitment data.

2. Through cross-generational participatory research, explore how community knowledge, lived experience and histories can inform place-based resources co-developed with young people, families, elders and practitioners in Black community spaces, to support STEM identity and access.

3. Examine how educators, community practitioners, employers/apprenticeship providers engage with the resources, and their potential to inform inclusive recruitment and community engagement practices.

4. Evaluate how the resources are experienced and implemented, including enabling and limiting factors and preliminary contributions to STEM identity, access and organisational practice, generating transferable learning for wider communities and organisations.

What is Collaboratory?

Collaboratory is a research programme, led by Universities for Nottingham and the Leicester Universities Partnership, that places community knowledge and experience at the heart of research. This eight-year initiative is pioneering a new approach to collaboration, working closely with local communities and community-focused organisations to develop and deliver research that addresses the needs and priorities of local communities.

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