Case Study – Moving Conversations
Organisation name: Leicester City Council / Active Together
Contact name: Sophie Noon
Role / job title: Place Programme Manager
Partnership / collaborators involved: Leicester City Council, Active Together, Education & Schools, Centre for Ethnic Health, Eyres Monsell Children & Young Peoples Centre, Saffron Neighbourhood Council, St Phillips Centre, St Barnabas Library, Stocking Farm Community Shop, The Peace Centre, University of Cambridge
Synopsis:
Active Together, Leicester City Council, and Sport England collaborated on “Moving Conversations” to tackle physical activity inequality in high-deprivation areas. By training and compensating local “Moving Conversationalists” in appreciative inquiry , the project held over 700 face-to-face community discussions , analysed alongside the University of Cambridge. This place-based evaluation successfully uncovered deep psycho-social root causes of inactivity. The project successfully shifts power directly to residents, and Leicester is beginning to transform local insights into structural, community-led strategic planning and resource allocation.
The Story:
The challenge
Physical activity inequality is deeply tied to geography and structural deprivation. Traditional top-down evaluation methods often fail to capture the complex, interconnected barriers—such as crime, poor infrastructure, and lack of social connection—that prevent residents in low-income areas from feeling safe enough to exercise. The challenge lay in building community trust, navigating the working patterns of community partners, uncovering the deep psycho-social and political root causes of physical inactivity and creating space for people to imagine a move active future,
What was done
Following learning from Wakefield’s ‘Big Conversation’ and guidance from the Public Health team at Wakefield Council, the team decided upon a flexible, adaptive participatory approach. Local residents were recruited, trained, and compensated as “Moving Conversationalists” (MCs) to shift systemic power dynamics. Co-designed with academic partners, the evaluation blended qualitative, participatory tools (asset mapping, photovoice) with routine data capture across key neighbourhoods. The MCs met residents where they felt secure—such as schools, hubs, and libraries — building peer trust and safety as a prerequisite for gathering authentic insights. These findings were linked back to the project’s Theory of Change.
Impact and outcomes
This can include wellbeing outcomes, participation, system impact, learning or early indicators.
Data is welcome where available, but not essential.
- Shifted Power and Agency: Residents moved away from relying on external entities to fix local issues, gaining the agency to drive change. This led to community-led initiatives, such as self-organised neighbourhood clean-up walks and direct requests to local decision-makers.
- Process Redesign: The project established a practical feedback loop to turn data into strategic action. Future plans include shifting resource control to communities by introducing neighbourhood champions and exploring participatory budgeting.
- Cross-Sector Collaboration: Micro-level community insights are now being utilised to build relationships with senior leaders, successfully connecting everyday experiences to high-level strategic planning across the city.
- MC Development: The flexible design accommodated partner anxieties, fostering community leadership, communication skills, and personal growth among the MCs.
Learning and Relevance
Why this matters
Others can learn that shifting power requires tangible structural commitment: recruiting, training, and compensating local people to act as trusted community leaders. Furthermore, evaluation shouldn’t just record what happened, but how and why change occurs by utilizing robust frameworks like Context-Mechanisms-Outcomes (CMO) tied to an explicit Theory of Change.
Crucially, this work proves that community data shouldn’t sit in a static report. It must form an active feedback loop where learning immediately refines the strategy. Whether it is planning to use local artists to feedback insights to communities or adapting timelines to meet the varying capacities and anxieties of your partners, keeping the process human, creative, and adaptive is what builds lasting systemic trust.
What would you do differently next time?
A reflective limitation of the current cycle was a gap in perspectives from wider system partners. In the next cycle, we will actively work to integrate these broader viewpoints to ensure strategic alignment.
Additionally, as we move from the planning phase to delivery, we must explicitly track how our planned actions—specifically the implementation of neighbourhood champions and participatory budgeting—unfold in practice. We will focus our future evaluation on measuring the concrete, long-term impacts that this shared learning has on wider strategic decision-making and policy change across the city