With LOCUS we have aimed to enhance social work education, practice, research and policy by engaging social workers to support students in researching the lifeworld perspective of residents in urban neighbourhoods. Through collaboration with field partners, LOCUS has created relevant knowledge to support community building and democratic urban governance in European cities facing societal challenges. The project facilitates a community of practice in community-oriented social work and social work education. We do this by encouraging international exchange among students, professionals and academics. To strengthen educational quality we have trained lecturers and prepared students with integrated research and social work skills, and we will continue to do so after the project is finished. This fosters global to local understanding and supports public engagement. Ultimately we seek to improve students' and professionals’ inquiry and communication skills, embed co-produced knowledge in curricula, innovate through connecting education with social work practice, deepen understanding of residents' experiences, and use student-generated data to spark community dialogue.
We have applied for this project because of the needs we identified of social work lecturers (and their institutions), social work students, and social workers, in combination with our ambition to expand a previous international cooperation across more European cities. With LOCUS we build upon our previous knowledge from successful initiatives like MyCityYourCity. Through this experience and our own needs analysis we found that there is a large need amongst service providers and community workers, and with it the institutions that educate them, to better understand the lifeworld of urban residents, particularly those living in diverse neighbourhoods that face several social and economic challenges. We formulated two key questions that cover these needs and that drove the application of this project: How can current and future social workers gain a good understanding of the experiences, needs and preferences of urban residents and how can they involve these citizens and their knowledge in more collaborative and more inclusive ways?, And How do we prepare our social work students to contribute to social inclusion and community building in 21st century European cities?