Community-university partnership research retreats: A productive force for developing communities of research practice

This chapter explores the challenges of fostering learning across traditional academic and non-academic boundaries when conducting participatory research in community-university partnerships. The authors were all active collaborators in the Imagine – Social programme. They focus on the role of research retreats in including a diversity of partners in this long-term research project. After introducing the key terms of ‘community of practice’ and ‘retreats’, the chapter describes the types of boundaries that were addressed and the challenges that were faced in crossing them. Next the authors present their approach to crossing these boundaries by cultivating a community of practice through these retreats. The stages of development of a community of practice (Wenger et al, 2002) are then set out and are reframed to focus on boundary issues drawing on the successive retreats as illustrations. Finally, the chapter closes by identifying the key enablers that supported the development of such a boundary-crossing community.