The project focused on informal family learning in urban disadvantaged communities experiencing austerity in England and Portugal.

Poor families with young children are harder hit than any other group by austerity policies. Informal family learning in community spaces contributes to development of young citizens, for character building, positive learning dispositions and executive learning functions, influencing successful school outcomes.

This connection between school outcomes and informal learning in urban environments is vital, under-researched and relevant to many urban communities experiencing austerity.

We mapped the impact of austerity in English and Portuguese disadvantaged urban communities, documenting changing levels of availability/access to what were, historically, public, free, cultural/leisure services on which poor families depend for stimulation and extension of family learning, including libraries, parks, playgrounds, youth clubs and museums.

The project aimed to enhance family and informal learning for disadvantaged children before entry to school, generating learning with international relevance.

It also aimed to consider how disadvantaged young children and families experienced the impact of austerity on their local community spaces/places where informal and family learning took place, and explored innovative, community led practices which had kept such leisure and recreational spaces alive and thriving.

We collaborated with researchers and practitioners who work across the social sciences and humanities in two European countries as exemplars of this phenomenon, with particular focus on the role and impact of community cultural artists in extending family and informal learning opportunities within urban community spaces.

The project was international in scope looking at the impact of austerity and responses to it within disadvantaged communities in northern and southern Europe, exploring saliences across the two countries, with a view to wider transfer of the knowledge generated.

In this project we mapped the impact of austerity on availability/access to community spaces/places in Birmingham (England) and Oporto (Portugal) disadvantaged wards, examining through family and community interviews, changing levels of access to what were, historically, public, free, cultural/leisure services in urban communities, on which poor families depend for stimulation and extension of family learning, including libraries, parks, playgrounds, youth clubs and museums.

Objectives were to:

1. Examine the impact of austerity on the availability of, and public access to, free community places and resources on which informal family learning often depends for those who are economically less well off in two disadvantaged urban communities in England and two in Portugal.

2. Explore how the socialisation, character formation and executive learning skills of children may have been affected by reductions in the availability of, and access, to local community spaces/places which has impacted on informal and family learning, particularly in disadvantaged (low income) families in the two countries.

3. Document examples of current local community action which, through the period of austerity (2010-2017) has successfully sustained free public spaces/places and their contribution to the enhancement of informal family learning in the study communities.

4. Explore how creative, cultural, interventions in local community spaces can enhance the impact of limited public funding to better support informal family learning.

5. Through capturing the contextual processes in these urban informal learning spaces, to model possibilities which will be transferable to other such contexts, making a broader contribution to the policy and practice of working with disadvantaged families in public, free community places.

• How has austerity impacted on the availability of, and access to, of public, free, informal learning spaces and resources in two English and two Portuguese communities?

• How have character building, positive learning dispositions and the executive learning functions* of children been affected by the reduction in free, public community spaces and resources, especially for disadvantaged, low income families?

• In the face of austerity, how have communities and services maintained and sustained free, public community spaces and resources, particularly with regard to building neighbourhood community building, solidarity and creativity?

• What additional action can be taken to enhance informal family learning in free, public community spaces?