Our Work

How We Might Live: a Model for Future Neighbourhoods

To mark the 40th anniversary of Coin Street Community Builders, the Popular team carried out a mixed-method research project exploring how the landmark community-led redevelopment on London’s South Bank has contributed to human flourishing over four decades. Through stakeholder interviews, participant observation and a community archiving workshop, the report identified the core features, qualities and outcomes of the “Coin Street” model. The launch event included MPs, councillors, urban developers and community organisations.

"Skittled Out?" and other social infrastructure research

Skittled Out? was published in 2018 and paved the way for much of the recent policy and research interest in social infrastructure in the UK. Dan collected evidence from three areas – in Southampton, Manchester and Bristol – and explored the collapse of social infrastructure in these areas and more widely - and who owns and controls the places in which social capital is formed. A follow-up piece, “New Social Spaces”, appeared in the Winter 2024 edition of Stir to Action magazine, exploring the undocumented rise in spaces and places such as board game cafés, bouldering centres, mosques and makerspaces. 

​

In 2025, Popular partnered with Stir to Action to produce "Social Clubs, Community Power and Political Participation" for Power to Change, exploring the role of social and working men's clubs in community building and offering policy recommendations for how to revitalise this often-overlooked example of democratic, member-run social infrastructure.

Oliver has also written for Stir to Action on football clubs as social infrastructure (“Football and the New Economy: Overlapping Communities”).

Community ownership

Oliver played a pivotal role in taking Bath City FC into fan ownership through a £365,000 community share offer, and later served on the board of Supporters Direct (now the Football Supporters Association) as its representative in Europe. He has also advised other groups on community share offers, including fans of Crewe Alexendra FC, Bristol music venue Exchange, Bath performing arts venue Komedia, and the Bovey Paradiso in Bovey Tracey. His doctoral research focuses on transitions from private to community ownership.

Dan advised the Church Conservation Trust on governance options for a cherished community asset in a rural Herefordshire village, and has advised governments around the world on legal forms around social and community enterprise. He also researched and wrote the case for a community wealth fund on behalf of Local Trust.

Citizen participation

Oliver has co-authored two reports on citizen participation for New Citizen Project, RAPID Democracy and Council Culture, as well as leading the design and delivery of numerous participatory processes to co-create participatory strategies, cultures and opportunities for large organisations such Co-op Group, Historic England, National Autistic Society and Kirklees Council. He also led the design and delivery of the Council Culture collaborative innovation project, which brought together three local authorities over 12 months to explore, test and iterate ideas for promoting citizen-friendly and participatory cultures.

Neighbourhood Regeneration

Zoe is a steering committee member of the Centre for Urban and Community Research at Goldsmiths College as well as a member of international urban research network NYLON. She has previously contributed to an evaluation project for the Fellowship Inn in Southeast London.

Dan helped deliver the feasibility study for the Mayor of London's Creative Land Trust, and another for Meanwhile Space on community space in a south London housing estate. He also built an investment model for meanwhile use at the Queen Elizabeth Park. He developed the business case for the creation of Bristol Creative Common, part of the Temple Quarter Enterprise Zone.

Mixed methods research

Zoe is an Associate Lecturer in Sociology at Goldsmiths College with strong expertise in research methods. Her doctoral research explored children's and families’ accounts of housing precarity in austerity Britain through a series of case studies, developing a qualitative data patchwork from crowdsourced archives, local housing activism and participatory arts projects, alongside policy and legal texts. 

Oliver has experience in organisational ethnography and qualitative methods through his doctoral research at Goldsmiths College, and participatory and co-creative methods through his work as Strategy & Research Director of New Citizen Project.