Community and civic engagement

The Centre for Social Responsibility works with communities, practitioners and organisations to explore social issues, strengthen participation and create opportunities for people to shape research, policy and practice.

Our approach to civic engagement is collaborative. We are not only interested in undertaking research about communities, but also in creating spaces where different forms of knowledge and experience can be shared. Our activities bring together academics, community organisations, practitioners, policymakers, students and members of the public around issues including inequality, social justice, health and wellbeing, place and belonging.

Collaboration Cafés

CSR’s Collaboration Cafés provide informal spaces for people from different sectors and disciplines to meet, exchange ideas and identify possibilities for future research and action. Recent Cafés have explored racism, violence against women and girls, food insecurity, flooding and watery places. These conversations have helped to develop new relationships and emerging programmes of collaborative work.

The Edge Hill Labyrinth

A Labyrinth cut into grass on the Edge Hill campus surrounding land.

The labyrinth is a distinctive community resource on the Edge Hill campus. Unlike a maze, a labyrinth has a single winding path leading to and from its centre. Walking it offers an opportunity to slow down, reflect and pay attention to our surroundings.

CSR is developing the labyrinth as a space for staff, students and community partners, including guided walks and activities exploring reflection, wellbeing, creativity, place and connection. It also offers possibilities for developing contemplative and creative approaches to research and knowledge exchange.

Our campus labyrinth

The Edge Hill University campus labyrinth offers a shared space for reflection, wellbeing, creativity and connection. It can be used individually or collectively by students, staff and community partners, and will also provide a focus for walks, events and activities across the year.

What is a labyrinth?

A labyrinth is an ancient pattern, rather like a complex spiral. Unlike a maze, which is designed to confuse, a labyrinth usually has a single path leading to the centre and back out again.

Labyrinth patterns have been found across many countries and cultures and have appeared in many different forms, including rock carvings, mosaics, pottery, coins, turf and stone. Their history stretches back thousands of years. Kimberly Saward describes the labyrinth as an ancient symbol whose history “circles the globe and weaves with subtle grace through the ages of humankind” (Saward, 2012: 8).

Today, labyrinths are used in many different ways: for reflection, contemplation, creativity, spiritual practice, wellbeing and simply as an opportunity to slow down and pay attention. There is no single right way to walk a labyrinth, and no particular belief is required.

Time, reflection and community

Walking a labyrinth creates a different experience of time. A walk may last only a few minutes, but it can provide a pause from everyday activity and an opportunity to notice thoughts, feelings, memories or ideas that emerge.

The experience may also change over time. Returning to the labyrinth at different points in the year, or at different moments in our lives, can create new experiences and connections with place, season and ourselves.

Labyrinths can be walked alone, but they can also bring people together. Saward suggests that labyrinths can create community as well as being created by communities, bringing together people across differences of age, background, profession, geography and belief.

Walking the labyrinth

There is no correct way to walk the labyrinth. Walk at your own pace and allow others to do the same.

You might think of the walk in three stages:

Release
As you enter, allow yourself to let go of thoughts or concerns that you do not need to hold for the next few minutes. Notice your breathing, soften your shoulders and release any tension.

Receive
When you reach the centre, pause for as long as feels comfortable. You might simply be still, notice your surroundings, give thanks for arriving, or remain open to whatever thoughts or ideas emerge.

Return
As you follow the same path back out, notice whether anything has shifted. Are there new thoughts, questions or decisions? Has anything changed in how you feel?

Afterwards, you may want to spend a little time reflecting — perhaps through writing, drawing, conversation or simply sitting quietly.

The labyrinth does not require us to reach a particular insight or outcome. Sometimes the value is simply in walking.

Further reading

Artress, Lauren (2006) Walking a Sacred Path: Rediscovering the Labyrinth as a Spiritual Practice. New York: Riverhead Books. A classic account of the modern labyrinth movement, written from a spiritual and contemplative perspective.

Saward, Jeff (2003) Labyrinths and Mazes: The Definitive Guide to Ancient and Modern Traditions. London: Gaia Books. Useful for the history, forms and global traditions of labyrinths.

Sellers, Jan and Moss, Bernard (eds) (2016) Learning with the Labyrinth: Creating Reflective Space in Higher Education. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Explores how labyrinths can support reflection, learning, wellbeing, creativity and community within higher education.

Sewell, Ruth, Sellers, Jan and Williams, Di (2012) Working with the Labyrinth. Glasgow: Wild Goose Publications. Particularly useful for facilitation, reflection and community practice.

Contact

The labyrinth programme is supported by staff trained in labyrinth facilitation through Veriditas, including training undertaken in Chartres, France. Please direct questions to:

Dr Victoria Foster, Director of CSR: [email protected]

Connecting people, place and nature

Community engagement also runs through CSR’s work around health, wellbeing and the natural environment. Our partnership activity has included public and practitioner events at RHS Bridgewater and work exploring green social prescribing and access to nature. Our 2025–26 RHS Bridgewater event focused on children, young people and nature and attracted around 110 participants from academic, health, practitioner and community settings. The event forms part of a developing long-term partnership between CSR and RHS Bridgewater.

National Civic Impact Accelerator (NCIA)

Through the National Civic Impact Accelerator (NCIA), CSR has explored how universities can work with communities in more participatory, creative and place-based ways.

In Skelmersdale, we worked with community partners to develop approaches that created opportunities for local people to contribute their knowledge, experiences and ideas. This included creative public engagement in the Concourse shopping centre ahead of the 2024 General Election, where passers-by were invited into conversations about voting, democracy and participation.

Working with theatre-for-social-change organisation Collective Encounters and other partners, we experimented with creative ways of engaging people in everyday public spaces rather than expecting them to attend conventional consultation events. The activity contributed to Edge Hill University becoming the first university to achieve Citizens UK Gold Voter Registration Champion status.

Learning from this work led to the co-produced A Guide to Creative Engagement in Public Spaces, a freely available practical resource sharing methods that other organisations can adapt when engaging communities.

Download "A Guide to Creative Engagement in Public Spaces"

The work reflects CSR’s wider approach to civic engagement: valuing community knowledge, creating accessible spaces for conversation and developing approaches that enable people to participate in discussions about the places and issues that affect them.

Supporting small local enterprises in Skelmersdale: The role of anchor institutions

This participatory research project, resourced by Research England’s QR Strategic Priorities Funding, explored some of the contributions that the small local enterprise sector makes and looked at how it might be enabled and developed, particularly through its links with anchor institutions. It also aimed to understand some of the challenges involved in establishing and maintaining small local enterprises in Skelmersdale.