Sara Gonzalez - Benefits of Traditional Markets Website Development - IAA Case Study

Professor Sara Gonzalez and her colleagues are using their IAA funding to create a website, helping them share their ongoing research into the benefits of traditional markets with local authorities.

Discovering value and sharing potential

Sara and her team of collaborative researchers, including colleague Dr Myfanwy Taylor, had been researching traditional markets for a number of years. ‘Markets – the physical places people go to shop – provide huge community value,’ Sara explains. ‘They support different types of people, particularly those on low incomes or in minority groups, in a variety of ways. Economically, they provide a place to buy affordable produce and somewhere for traders to make a living. Yet they’re also incredibly important hubs for social connections. People from different cultures mix and the elderly and isolated find a sense of community in a safe space for interaction.’

Despite these findings, Sara and her team discovered many local authorities didn’t fully appreciate the value of their local markets. ‘We wanted to share the results of our research so stakeholders could better understand their potential,’ she says. ‘We decided to develop a website so we could signpost local authorities to our findings and introduce them to our ideas.’

Developing a website to communicate findings

Sara successfully applied for the IAA funding to create the new website. ‘We had a website based on our initial research project, but we needed to communicate our findings more clearly,’ she explains. ‘To do that, I wanted to employ someone to refresh the website, making it easier for people outside the university to find information and use it in a way that was relevant to them.’

Once funding was secured, Sara chose to employ Rosie Wilkinson, a research assistant on her previous project, to bring the new site to life. ‘We want to share what we have learnt from best practice around the UK about how to make markets community hubs for inclusive economies,’ Sara says. ‘Rosie is breaking down our findings, extracting information from our reports and outlining everything we’ve learnt in an accessible way.’

Connecting funding streams to spread awareness

‘Our IAA funding contributed to a small part of our wider research project,’ Sara explains. ‘Yet it’s a vital piece of work that’s helped us find an easier way to communicate our findings. The Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) financed our previous research work in this field, so we already recognised that funding would help us reach wider audiences.’

Sara and her colleagues are continuing to disseminate their vision of markets as more than just retail environments. ‘Naturally, markets will still need to make money,’ she says. ‘But we can further explore their potential as community spaces, focussing on food justice, public health and affordable, warm spaces for everyone.’

‘We’ve had many enquires through different parts of our work, from speaking at conferences and on the radio to people looking at the website,’ concludes Sara. ‘We are working as consultants at one local council, searching for alternative ideas about how they can make their markets socially inclusive. Now we’ve made these connections through our research, we can keep sharing our message, evidencing how markets can be community hubs and supporting more local authorities and individuals who share this vision – and make a change.’