Neighbourly Lab is a research and innovation organisation committed to promoting more supportive, inclusive communities.
People thrive when they feel connected to those around them, listened to and empowered to actively participate in their community. The way our spaces and systems are set up plays an integral role in achieving this.
Too often, members of underserved and lesser heard communities can be left without access to the support and resources they need to fully engage in a positive, healthy and rewarding life.
Our Mission
Our mission is to understand HOW
people and communities can be supported to better connect.
We want to gain insight into what works, where and why, in order to achieve solutions that can be scaled and replicated from one place to the next. Most of all, these solutions should address the needs of lesser heard communities, demonstrating sensitivity towards their experiences and priorities.
Social Infrastructure
From supermarkets to bus stations to WhatsApp groups, places and spaces should be designed to help people meet and mix.
We aim to enhance how our built environment, physical infrastructure, and online platforms can foster long-term connections and support in communities.
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Inclusive Service Provision
Public and frontline services have a duty to offer inclusive support to more marginalised and sometimes vulnerable residents.
We help organisations and community members to come together and shape services so that they work well for everyone, and particularly those who previously have not been empowered to contribute to decision-making.
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Accelerating Welcome
Whether it’s finding money for a rental deposit or learning to navigate an unfamiliar education system, the upheaval of adjusting to a new place can take its toll both financially and emotionally.
We want to help newcomers settle quickly and comfortably, minimising the burden of adjusting to a new place. We focus on how places are set up to welcome newcomers through the provision of services, information and tools, and identify ways to mitigate the friction of new groups living together.
Read moreInnovative
We are focused on innovation
We explore how environments can be adapted to provide more opportunities for connection, and consider the tools that can be used to enhance wellbeing and provide support. Crucially, we assist partners across sectors in implementing these changes to serve everyone in their area equitably and inclusively.
Our work focuses on three key pathways that enable us to pursue our mission:
Thoughtful
We are thoughtful in our approach
Every voice matters. We delve into the lived experience of communities and collaborate with those most in need to develop solutions that will allow all communities to thrive.
From ethnography to participatory methods to data analysis and more, our researchers invest time into high-quality, proven techniques that allow us to best understand what groups of people want and need. There’s a specialist team behind every tool we draw upon, ensuring the knowledge we gather is in safe hands.
Qualitive &
Ethnographic Research
Participatory Approaches
& Co-Design
Data for Targeting
& Asset-Mapping
Hands-On
Skills Development
Mixed-Method
Evaluation Tools
Online Instance
Galleries
Trusted
We are a trusted partner
We are proud to inform and support partners and funders from across private, public and third sector organisations, as well as academia. We believe that lasting, positive change requires a combined effort, which is why we focus on bringing together stakeholders from across communities and disciplines to develop shared solutions.
Client Testimonials
Jon Knight, CEO - TogetherEngaging with Local Authorities was key to ensuring the Big Help Out reached every community in the UK. We could not have done this without NeighbourlyLab’s support and expertise. More than this, they helped encourage LAs to think beyond what was easy to be able to provide meaningful and innovative opportunities for people to volunteer, and in turn create a legacy of volunteering in communities.
Amy Finch, Head of Policy and Impact - SpiritThe Reimagining Volunteering research is a timely and thoughtful contribution to the conversation about increasing the flexibility of volunteering – and in fact suggests that for a substantial section of the population, giving back and helping out are much more useful terms to describe how they want to support their communities. It was great to be able to support qualitative and ethnographic work to investigate this in more detail.
Neil Thurlow, Director of Public Protection - Hammersmith LETWe have been working with Neighbourly Lab for 2yrs. We first connected with the organisation to look at how we can evolve our Law Enforcement Team as we thought through how to improve communication, how best to deliver education and engagement as well as considering how best to listen, hear and respond to difficult situations.
Our experience of Neighbourly Lab has only been positive with staff saying how much they enjoyed the work, how much they had learnt and that they were more confident. Our communities are better connected to the service too following our close working relationship.Its been great working with Marnie and Grainne and we look forward to continuing our work together.
Lucy Dixon, Strategic Lead - Research, Surrey Heartlands Integrated Care SystemThere is so much evidence for the need to take different, more adaptive, and sensitive approaches when carrying out research with systematically excluded groups of people. This is where Neighbourly Lab’s strengths lie and is why we have such confidence in working with them.
Matt Mills, Head of UK Operations Transformation and Strategic Coordination - British Red CrossWorking with Neighbourly Lab was a delight. It was great to see the team get out and about, fully immersed in our services, speaking to frontline colleagues and service users all over the UK to build a rich picture of our work, the challenges and the opportunities. The research and subsequent outputs gave us incredible evidence based insight that has been enormously helpful as we consider how best to deliver our services in the UK to maximise impact.
Mark Walker, Skills Policy Manager - Great Yarmouth Borough CouncilI commissioned two separate research papers with Neighbourly Lab in 2023. The degree of challenge was particularly high given the research was simultaneous, within a very tight timeframe, and necessitated broad participation from a wide range of local stakeholders including community and employers.
The organisation offers added value through their flexibility and responsiveness ; when additional asks were made the outcome was always a positive and delivered in a friendly manner.
Karen Amsden, Principal Policy Officer - London CouncilsWe have really benefited from the commitment that Neighbourly Lab have shown to our Supporting London Boroughs Engagement project. They have worked so flexibly and empathetically, to deliver above and beyond what we asked from them as our Learning Partner. They have provided such high quality support and learning for the boroughs participating in the project, as well as us.
We believe that this is enabling the councils involved in this project being able to carry out more innovative engagement and work in a more sustainable and impactful way with particular communities (such as those who are deaf or hard of hearing).
Carla Johnson, Research and Consultation Manager - LB Waltham ForestThe Neighbourly Lab team are a delight to work with. Their service is consistently excellent, and the team are conscientious, considerate and perceptive – a key reason we keep going back to work with them.
Their strength lies particularly in conducting incredibly thoughtful research with smaller numbers of people but in great depth and detail, which always leads to high quality insights that we can really act upon.
Let’s Talk
We do our best work in partnership and we’re always looking to connect with potential collaborators from across all sectors. If that sounds like you, please get in touch.
Our Latest Resources
Travel Without Barriers: The Power of Co-Design in Accessibility
As enshrined in Article 3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, “Everyone has the right to life, liberty, and... Read more
Borough Innovators: How Redbridge, Sutton, Wandsworth & Westminster Councils are Redefining Community Engagement.
By Aba Amihyia As part of our Borough Spotlight for the Supporting London Boroughs Engagement Project, which was funded by... Read more