Research · Facilitation · Training
I work with organisations who want to understand and engage the communities they work within — more honestly, more inclusively, and more creatively. Because these are as much questions of process design as they are of politics.
Find out more
About
Homing Practices is where I think, write, and work. It sits at the intersection of participatory research, community engagement, and the production of environmental knowledges that takes seriously the question of who — and what — gets to belong somewhere.
My work is guided by a simple but demanding premise: that the people most affected by decisions about places, spaces, and policies are the ones whose knowledge matters most. Getting that knowledge into the room — honestly, creatively, and without flattening it into something more palatable — is what I’ve spent twenty years learning how to do. That includes asking hard questions about the infrastructure of participation itself: which voices get amplified, which get systematically excluded, and whether the systems we build for ‘engagement’ replicate or genuinely challenge existing structures of power.
I've worked with research councils, local authorities, community organisations, and built environment professionals across London and beyond. Recent projects include participatory consultation on urban greenspace for the London Borough of Hammersmith & Fulham, a British Academy-funded study on young people's social and cultural infrastructure, and research for Natural England on creative methods in environmental evidence-making.
My PhD explored how thread-based participatory art practices — knitting, spinning, making — can cultivate more attentive relationships between humans and the more-than-human world. I draw on thinkers like Donna Haraway, Karen Barad, and Tim Ingold — not to show off, but because their ideas genuinely shape how I work.
Homing Practices and East London Waterworks Park are in conversation with each other. ELWP — a community-led charity working to transform a concrete depot in Waltham Forest into London's first wild swimming park — is where the ideas get tested against ground, water, and real community life. The thinking and the doing feed each other.
I’m also paying close attention to what’s possible in civic and digital infrastructure — particularly work like vTaiwan, the participatory platform developed under Digital Minister Audrey Tang, which has demonstrated that democratic decision-making can be genuinely inclusive, transparent, and joyful without replicating the colonial and racialised hierarchies that so much governance infrastructure quietly encodes. That’s not a small claim. It’s a demonstrated alternative — and it shapes how I think about what good infrastructure, digital or otherwise, can look like.
Work with me
I work with research organisations, local authorities, community groups, housing associations, and built environment professionals who want to understand and engage the communities they serve — more honestly, more inclusively, and more creatively - who understand that this is as much a question of process design as it is of politics.
My work draws on years of practice at the intersection of participatory research, community development, and environmental thinking. I bring that experience to four areas:
Community-led research, impact evaluation, and consultation design. Particular expertise in reaching underrepresented communities, centering nonhuman stakeholders, and producing findings that are rigorous and genuinely useful — not just presentable.
British Academy · Natural England · Local Authorities · Community Organisations
Workshop design and facilitation for community groups, organisations, and multi-stakeholder processes — from neighbourhood visioning to governance design. I work with groups who need to make decisions together, especially where power is uneven or voices are unequal.
Community Groups · Research Organisations · Housing Associations · Public Bodies
For architects, housing associations, local authorities, and devolved government bodies who know they should be doing community engagement — and want to do it ethically, creatively, and well. Practical, grounded, and honest about who gets heard and who doesn't.
Architects · GLA · Housing Associations · Local & Devolved Government
For organisations thinking seriously about how participation gets structured — digitally, institutionally, spatially — and who want that structure to be genuinely emancipatory rather than a repackaging of existing hierarchies. Drawing on approaches from deliberative democracy, open civic tech, and digital participation (including the vTaiwan model), I help organisations ask better questions about the systems they're building before they build them: who do they centre, whose knowledge counts, and what would it look like to do this differently?
Community Groups · Research Organisations · Local & Devolved Government
Get in touch
If any of this sounds like what you're looking for — I'd love to hear from you.
miriam@homingpractices.org.uk