Driving urban transformation: A Q&A with Emma Tsoneva, Joanna Barrow and Karen Lucas

17 Apr 2025

Professor Karen Lucas, Emma Tsoneva and Joanna Barrow were awarded the Humanities Strategic Civic Engagement Fund (HSCEF) in 2023 for their project on reducing transport poverty.

Each year, the HSCEF, the Faculty’s flagship social responsibility fund, provides funding to several projects that are inspired by our location in Greater Manchester and aim to improve communities across our city-region. In 2023, Professor Karen Lucas, Emma Tsoneva and Joanna Barrow from the Manchester Urban Institute (MUI) received the HSCEF. Their project explored transport-related social exclusion, aiming to reduce transport poverty across Greater Manchester.

We spoke to Karen, Emma and Joanna to find out more about the impact of their project and how the HSCEF aided their work.

Please can you share what your project is about?

‘Transport and Social Exclusion: Co-creating a blueprint for reduction of transport poverty’ is a pilot project that emerged from an Innovation Lab co-hosted by the Manchester Urban Institute in November 2023. Our work addresses public transport provision through the Greater Manchester Bee Network and issues of transport-related social exclusion (TRSE), which often denies marginalised groups access to essential services. We worked directly with those most affected by transport inequalities, including the elderly, people on low incomes and parents of young children, to audit local conditions and co-design solutions that mitigate social exclusion.

What did you hope to achieve with your project and to what extent have you been able to accomplish your goals?

As researchers, we recognise the importance of designing new ways to engage local communities as key stakeholders in more participative, imaginative and creative ways than those that are generally used for public consultations. By co-producing a blueprint for community engagement in local transport planning, particularly in under-served areas of Greater Manchester, we provided actionable recommendations to inform the development of more socially equitable services. The project demonstrated that creative, participatory approaches can play a key role in driving local policy development.

How did your project support the University’s social responsibility and civic engagement priorities?

The University’s commitment to local communities runs through the heart of our work in Hindley and Sholver. Our project prioritised working with groups that face TRSE to address broader issues of economic prosperity, health and wellbeing. By engaging with community and public stakeholders in a process of co-production, our research contributes to more inclusive transport planning and has a tangible, positive impact on local lives.

How was your project enhanced and inspired by our location in Greater Manchester?

Greater Manchester provided a context that both inspired and shaped our work. Changes in the local transport sector, such as being the first city-region outside London to bring bus services under local government control as part of the Bee Network, provided us with the opportunity to engage a wider set of stakeholders in local transport planning. We used Transport for the North’s TRSE toolkit to identify areas of Greater Manchester where residents are most at risk of TRSE. Our methodology included desk-based GIS mapping of the selected local areas and creative engagement approaches, such as participatory mapping and photo voice that are grounded in the local environment to capture the lived experiences of residents. This approach built our understanding of everyday mobility challenges in Greater Manchester as well as building local capacity for integrated policy action.

What has been the biggest impact your project has had?

The stimulation of active and meaningful engagement with local communities. Through shifting dialogues around local transport planning, we have demonstrated that community-led solutions are a key element of practical local planning. Our work has established a new framework for engaging with outlying and marginalised communities, ensuring that their experiences and insights drive local policy development.

In relation to your project, is there anything planned for the future?

As a direct result of this work, our researcher, Joanna Barrow has secured funding for a 12-month secondment to Transport for Greater Manchester (TfGM). This provides the opportunity to work with TfGM to embed recommendations from the pilot study work in Hindley and Sholver to improve practice and to inform development of the Greater Manchester Transport Strategy to 2040.

Additionally, we continue to collaborate with the communities engaged through this project and have started work that draws together our experiences of embedding research in local neighbourhoods with those of other researchers in Manchester Urban Institute.

How has the funding from the Humanities Strategic Civic Engagement Fund aided your project?

The funding was crucial to our work. It enabled us to pilot innovative community engagement techniques to facilitate meaningful collaborations with residents of Greater Manchester. We were able to bridge gaps between academic research and real-world impact to ensure that previously marginalised voices were central to co-designing solutions to local challenges.

What advice would you give to anyone wanting to launch their own project with support from the Humanities Strategic Civic Engagement Fund?

We would highly recommend this. The HSCEF provided the opportunity to carry out essential pilot work necessary to form the foundation for larger funding applications. The researchers were able to innovate and test out creative research methods as well as initiating and developing on-going working relationships with both policymakers and community partners.

Find out more about this project on the MUI website and in a narrated project presentation.

Find out more about the Humanities Strategic Civic Engagement Fund.