We can facilitate workshops and reading groups for other organisations. We don’t charge for these, but if your group can afford it we really appreciate donations to help us cover costs! We currently offer a research skills for activists workshop, and can also facilitate reading groups. Email desk@thepridelibrary.org if you’re interested.

Reading groups

We have a few sets of political theory texts where we have multiple copies of the same book (details coming soon) for reading groups. We can either lend you these for your own group, or facilitate the discussion session for you.

Research Skills for Activists Workshop

The workshop is run by a PhD student with experience in academic research, data science, and research for activist groups. We focus on practical methods for finding, organising and analysing information.

Who is it for?

Anyone doing activism or community organising with a topic you want to know more about, or data you’ve collected and need help handling. For example, you might want to find out about a particular institution’s ties to the arms trade, but not know where to get started. Maybe you’re interested in pollution levels in your local area but you need help analysing the statistics published by the government. If you’ve ever wanted to find out more about something that’s important to you but you didn’t know how, this workshop is for you.

What do you cover?

This is a practical workshop focused on facilitating the projects you bring to it. Some examples of ways we can help:

• Developing a research plan, if you have a vague idea but don’t know how to start
• Methods of finding publicly available information, including how and when to use sources like Companies House and the Land Registry; using the Wayback Machine to find information companies have tried to remove; and how to read financial records
• Tools and techniques for organising information as you collect it
• Data analysis methods, including producing graphs and summaries of raw data; interpreting data and drawing conclusions; assistance with maths and programming
• How to write up your findings to share them publicly