Black South West Network (BSWN) is a racial justice organisation based in Bristol, effecting public policy on race. Several years ago, BSWN was thinking about how the organisation effects change. With limited resources, BSWN didn’t have any researchers at that point and felt it would make sense to work with a university.  Initially BSWN had individual relationships with academics at the University of Bristol, which were then grown into a strategic partnership.

The partnership with the University increases accessibility for the organisation to data, and a connection to the wider community so that more people can have access to data. The partnership is not just about access to data, but the democratisation of data and knowledge.

The bigger objective is around how we decolonize knowledge. Black South West Network points out that knowledge is held academically and there are power dynamics involved, so how do we break that?

BSWN holds workshops with community-led organisations and includes academics to unpack and understand what knowledge means, and who holds knowledge in the power dynamics. This gives a good model of how research can be done differently. Knowledge is built into communities so that people can own knowledge. BSWN informs the University across a range of research areas and opens doors for strategic discussions around race.

Sado Jirde, director of Black Southwest Network says

‘’The University of Bristol has a huge role in the city. What is exciting, is it feels like a collective journey with the University in terms of understanding its purpose, its contribution, and what it could be to the city, to communities. It has moved on in terms of understanding race and racism and the historical relationship of the University around race. Those conversations are being had now, that’s a really good thing. We need to move to the next phase of significant intervention.”