This symposium, in two parts, reports on city-based teams forging a multi-cities ethnography focussed on child poverty and the challenges for schooling future generations. This takes a cue from a local place-based action study on Trem y Mynydd, the pseudonym given to a housing estate adjacent to the city of Bangor in Wales. The first set of four papers discusses the ethnographic approach forged on Trem y Mynydd in the face of damage done by de-industrialisation, unemployment, exploitation of the working poor, Universal Credit, benefit cuts and Brexit, to focus on children’s lived experiences of poverty. The second set of four papers interrogates this ethnographic work and the ways it might inform other city-based teams with a view to inter-connecting across international borders with the express purpose of raising a common voice on what is required of research-informed schools/social policies, ostensibly a hallmark of democratic governments.

The action study on Trem y Mynydd was initiated by a Welsh Government sponsored Children First needs assessment, which was conducted in 2017-2018 (see Lewis, 2023). Lewis, who won the contract after submitting a competitive tender, interrogated publically available data and then embarked on fieldwork to identify needs but also the strengths and assets of the local geographically defined school-community. In her endeavour to engage in critical analyses of both quantitative and qualitative data, Lewis organised a multi-agency group of workers employed on the estate and invited academic partners, who recognised her work as a first ethnographic sketch of the lived experiences of child poverty.

As Lewis’s fixed-term work drew to a close, the group made it clear that given the findings, they did not want to disband and called for further research. This provoked a core group to reconvene as the Bangor Poverty and Learning in Urban Schools (PLUS) team of school staff, multi-agency workers and academic partners along with resident families and critical friends. Lewis also joined this team, who continued to meet in two series of six monthly seminars (2019-2020) geared to mentor and support participants to become research-active, all sponsored by Professor Carl Hughes (Bangor University). At the outset they agreed on a twin purpose: to follow through on the needs assessment and work towards an ‘ethnography that makes a difference’ (see Mills and Morton, 2013), which included critical discussion of definitions of child poverty and human rights, inspired by former UN Special Rapporteur Philip Alston’s (2018) probe into Extreme Poverty in the UK, which involved Wales.

They also resolved to contribute to a multi-cities ethnography, which was then being planned to include four cities in the UK, apropos a recommendation from the BERA Research Commission on Poverty and Policy Advocacy (2017-2019), and four in Australia given liaison with the AARE Equity network. While those eight city-based teams made good progress towards coordination, the first Covid lockdown in early 2020 put paid to that project. The Bangor PLUS team re-grouped in early 2021 and proceeded to develop a school-community-university partnership that gave rise to a participatory ethnography as a model way of working in Wales, recognised as a small European nation-state that espouses a social democratic social imaginary, which in some portfolios contrasts markedly to consecutive UK Westminster governments' neoliberal project. This is all showcased in Beckett’s (2023) edited book to be launched at conference, while the task for this two-part symposium is to explore the possibility of a research partnership in a multi-cities ethnography, inviting other city-based teams active in school-communities to join: building clout on child poverty, sharing insights, synchronising findings, joining forces and ultimately lobbying through our networks including the ECER, ACER, the OECD, UN and UNESCO.

Alston, P. (2015) Report of the Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights, Philip Alston United Nations available online at: https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/798707?ln=en Beckett, L. (ed) (2023) Child poverty in Wales: Exploring the challenges for schooling future generations University of Wales press: Cardiff Lewis, C. (2023) Children First – A place-based approach to addressing poverty & inequalities in Beckett, L. (ed) Child poverty in Wales: Exploring the challenges for schooling future generations University of Wales press: Cardiff Mills, D. & Morton, M. (2013). Ethnography in Education Sage