Our Vision
Sometimes, you see the Northern Lights from coastal areas of North East England. It's one of the many fantastic and little known things about our region. Heading into the night to spot them, though, requires dedication and hope; it's chilly and damp out there, and sometimes the Northern Lights decide not to show, for reasons they'd prefer not to tell you. Co-production can sometimes be like that; you don't always know how to look or where to go, and people can hide away from telling you what they really think or feel or know. At Northern Lights Research Associates, we have the energy and commitment to empower you to persevere. To enable you to discover and to understand together those very most hidden of lived experiences with which your organisation seek to engage. To illuminate your world in new ways. To allow your new light to inspire and to motivate change.
Artwork on this page by Kathy's Art Project Ideas
Our Mission
At Northern Lights Research Associates, we aim:
(1) To make research and evaluation accessible, relatable, and enjoyable for third sector organisations
(2) To work continually in co-production with organisations and their service users, always foregrounding their most hidden and marginalised voices
(3) To be creative, flexible, and teachable, drawing upon arts-based methods and everyone's ideas
(4) To go beyond simply hearing everyone's voice or making everyone feel heard, and to initiate meaningful and sustainable systemic and structural transformation
(5) To celebrate and to champion the cultures and the people of North East England
Our Ethics and Values
Go to the people
Live with them
Learn from them
Love them
Start with what they know
Build with what they have
But with the best leaders, when the work is done, the task accomplished, the people will say
We have done this ourselves
- Lao Tzu
