cadence comments about research

1 Sep 2009

Hoodie, goodie, buddy filming

Cadence's Joseph Rowntree Foundation funded Hoodie, goodie, buddy project included an innovative strand looking at perceptions of young people's behaviour depending on travel mode. If three kids in hoodies are messing about on a bench and someone drives past do they suspect anti-social behaviour ... more

9 Jul 2009

Hoodie, goodie, buddy and benches

Cadence's Hoodie, goodie, project, funded by JRF, stemmed from an event about walking and cycling research. We found ourselves making the point that modal shift (cars to bikes and foot) may well have public health and environmental advantages, but there may be bigger less obvious community benefits. Could neighbourhoods with more street activity like walking and cyling (and children's play, for example) be places where young people hanging around on park benches is seen as a good thing, rather than a threat ... more

17 Mar 2009

Fear of youth - Hoodie, goodie, buddy

During Cadence's work on youth provision, play and youth justice sensible people have often reminded us that youth have been seen as a problem throughout history. They often refer to newspaper articles from 100 years ago. Today psychologist and TV presenter Tanya Byron trumps them all with a reference to youth problems in Egypt 6,000 years ago ... more

20 Jan 2009

Abandoned communites, education and Obama

Walking past boarded-up houses and litter on the way to school can have a devastating effect on children's behaviour and exam results says a report featured in The Guardian today. Is this the sort of thing that soon to be President Obama understands? ... more

9 Jan 2009

Aspirations and attainment in deprived communities

A recent project between the Social Exclusion Task Force, DCSF and CLG says 'Young people in certain types of neighbourhood are less likely to develop high aspirations. These neighbourhoods tend to have high levels of deprivation ... more

5 Jan 2009

Depression among the young at alarming level?

On the first day of the year when work is unavoidable, for those people still lucky enough to have a job, a headline like the one above, is well ... depressing. On the other hand if you read the article things are not so clear cut ... more

17 Dec 2008

Focus on customer needs instead of targets

'Many of today's targets fail because they are set by people remote from what customers want' says a Jeremy Cox of Vanguard Consulting in an article in the Guardian's Society section today. He also suggests that there is no correlation between the services that councils provide and their ratings. Cadence Works' research work on innovation in public services would tend to support this view ... more

3 Dec 2008

Performance Art report - Institute for Government

The Institute for Government has published its first research report. Performance Art is broadly about improving public services, but with a strong focus on PSAs and LAAs. It argues that the death of performance management and targets in Central Government have been wildly exaggerated ... more