By Shona Ulrichsen Community-Embedded Researcher for the REALITIES Clackmannanshire Hub Honestly, being a Community Embedded Researcher – or CER – in the REALITIES research had messed with my head a little. I am not an academic, and have spent the last 8 years growing and nurturing a small, community-based youth organisation—Ochil Youths Community Improvement—firmly focused on relational practice as a way to improve outcomes for young people in Scotland’s smallest mainland local authority. I dipped my toe into the REALITIES world in the last funding cycle—REALITIES Phase 2—when another organisation in my area had invited me along, giving me a glimpse into the [...]

This exciting output, created by artist James Abell, emerged from collaborative work with the Binks Hub as part of the ‘REALITIES Translation Series’, which aims to communicate REALITIES findings in accessible and creative ways. While GDPR and data management can often perceived as dry subjects, they are critically important in their own right and as central to the REALITIES project. Ongoing challenges around interdisciplinary research, community engagement, and data governance prompted extensive reflection, discussion, and creative problem-solving. The REALITIES project manager once commented that it felt ‘like a Jenga tower’— where one misstep risks destabilising everything, highlighting the complexity and fragility of navigating [...]