This paper focuses on collaborative research undertaken in partnership with Fig Leaf (pseudonym) - a charitable organisation based in a historical allotment site, in an area of urban social deprivation. Fig Leaf manages four community projects, uniquely based on the same allotment site, and attracting four, distinct user groups.

The projects are as follows: The Community Garden, offering fun and educational activity for local families; The Growth Space, providing social and learning opportunities for the local community; City Green, a wildlife and conservation project; and The History Plot, a site of historical architectural and horticulture interest. The projects incorporate opportunities for volunteering, activities for local groups, and coordinate outreach into the local community.

The research centres on developing methodologies that can effectively generate data to gather the experiences of this diverse range of participant groups, including ‘at risk’ adults and young people, with a particular focus on exploring the benefits of participation to wellbeing.

The concept of wellbeing was identified by Fig Leaf as the focus of the study, based on their own analysis of in-house project evaluations. There is not scope here to discuss the multifarious interpretations of the term in these evaluations. However, a review of funding applications and reporting revealed the repeated reference to the ‘therapeutic benefits’ of participation, without further qualification, and the commitment to green social prescribing (Leavell et al., 2019; Fixsen and Barrett, 2022) by providing opportunities for engagement that would be of emotional, social, or physical benefit to participants.

The research aimed to address the following overarching question:

How can researchers and community garden project professionals co-construct methodologies to generate and interpret participant experience data?

And sub-questions:

What methodologies generate rich, experiential data from different groups participating in the Fig Leaf projects?

What are the ‘therapeutic benefits’ of participating in activities at Fig Leaf?

Why does this matter?

Community environmental initiatives can provide rich learning opportunities, and have the potential to positively impact communities and contribute to education for global sustainability (Christie and Waller, 2019; Flachs, 2010; Smith and Sobel, 2014)

Green social prescribing is much discussed across the charitable sector but there is limited evidence to demonstrate its efficacy or outcomes, since Social Prescribing is still a developing practice (Brandling and House, 2009; Chesterman and Bray, 2018).

However, robust methodologies that can underpin claims about the participant experience are limited and therefore the ‘impact’ of the prescription (e.g. University of York, 2015).

Urban agriculture organisations, such as Fig Leaf, are vulnerable. They exist with precarious and short-term funding (St. Clair et al., 2020), threat from development in the drive for housing and infrastructure (Fletcher and Collins, 2020), and lack sufficient expertise or time for effective project evaluation that comprises rich participant voice data (Houlden et al., 2018)

Fig Leaf is the oldest and largest allotment site in Europe. It has over 25 years’ experience of working with individuals and groups in the local community and, through externally funded project activity, has built significant expertise in working with a diverse range of users, some with significant and complex emotional, social, and learning needs.

This research into the unique site of Fig Leaf enables development of robust methodologies that can be packaged as a ‘toolkit’ for sharing across the UK and wider, international community of urban agriculture projects (Houlden et al., 2018).

These methodologies capture often marginalised voices, through participatory methods that have the capacity to empower, and to ‘decolonise’ experiential data by moving the site of the research out of the academy and into the community, both physically and intellectually (Elder and Odoyo, 2017; Igwe et al., 2022).

The researchers worked with Fig Leaf to co-construct sensitive, participatory, and decolonising ways (Elder and Odoyo, 2017; Igwe et al., 2022) to undertake research into the charity’s activities, that would be led by the organisation’s needs and objectives and informed by the researchers’ own epistemological interests in participatory methods and participant voice. These objectives were to: - provide richer evidence of the benefits of their projects to the local community in their funder evaluation reports - develop a toolkit of project evaluation strategies for Fig Leaf staff to use in future. Methods: • Overt observations of individuals engaged in activities on site • Unstructured interviews, to generate data around participant experience with a focus on the broad a priori theme of social, emotional, and physical wellbeing. • Field Notes – based on observations, and researchers’ experience, and including reflections on methods and methodological approaches • Photo elicitation – individual and group discussion based on photographs of activities taken on site. This method was proposed by staff at Fig Leaf and included in the data generation plan. During the research event, the method was not used, due to lack of engagement. However, one of the support workers had brought a ‘reflection book’ which had been co-created with one of the adults with autism. It contained photos of work that the user had been involved with during their time at Fig Leaf, and reflective comments about the work that they had done. This provided the basis for one of the unstructured interviews. Ethical approval was granted by University of Nottingham Ethics Committee. All participants were provided with information prior to participation and consented to the inclusion of their data in the research. The methods were piloted with the following participants, who are indicative of the range of different user groups, and span the four different Fig Leaf projects: - two school refusers and their teachers - members of the Fig Leaf Management Committee - users of the regular Wednesday community gardening group - the Education Worker from the local Art Gallery, who brings a group of vulnerable women from a number of locations in England, on a fortnightly basis - a group of predominantly speech-impaired adults with autism and their support workers.

The data was analysed thematically (Braun and Clarke, 2006) and themes generated inductively, and refined to produce the below overarching themes, connected to their respective sub-themes. These sub-themes illustrate the range of articulations of ‘wellbeing’ and the ‘benefits’ that are experienced by participants across the various groups. 1. Space and site (My surroundings) 2. Emotions (How I feel) 3. Health (My body) 4. Nature (Plants and animals) 5. Self-efficacy (I can) 6. Skills development/learning (I’ve learnt) The research points to the following conclusions, and considerations for development: • Research tools must be responsive to individuals, rather than pre-determined, in order to engage participants effectively and generate meaningful experiential data. • Unstructured interviews are highly valuable, yet resource-heavy, methods that can support a decolonising approach to data generation • Participatory methods are particularly effective and allow for rich, experiential data • Some indication that green social prescribing can support wellbeing, with the caveat that this sample does not yield sufficiently conclusive data • Further research is needed to develop robust, and transferable, participatory methodologies that can apprehend the notion of ‘wellbeing’ in ‘green’ spaces. • Genuine co-construction involves significant commitment to an iterative, ‘trial and error’ approach that takes into consideration all expertise and experience, in a negotiated and neutral ‘third space’. At times, this runs counter to researcher-driven participant data generation in its malleable methodological approach that must respond to participant/context freely. Phase Two is currently ongoing, and centres on working with Fig Leaf’s outreach project staff to explore participant experience in the wider community.

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