Evidence is the six-stone weakling of the policy world … confronted by … the four-hundred pound brute called politics (Ray Pawson)

Diverse forms of knowledge and evidence Research & evaluation reports Audit & inspection findings/data Routine monitoring data, stats and PIs Local & international exemplars Costings data Client & user experience data Expert views & insider knowledge Surveys, opinion polls & stakeholders consultations System capacity data Models & forecasts

Many active players in policy networks PoliticiansCivil servantsPolitical advisors Professional bodies Media Lobbyists and advocacy groups Audit, inspection and scrutiny regimes Government analysts University and college researchers Research institutes and independent evaluators Think tanks and knowledge brokers Wider community Loc govt officers Service providersService users Challenge of opening up to many voices, loosening control, tolerating diverse views on evidence…

F What image best represents how you think about the main challenges? A E D CB

Improving evidence use: addressing supply, demand, and that in between Improving stocks or reservoirs of evidence-based knowledge Increasing demand in political and professional worlds, and wider society Research translation, knowledge management and knowledge pools, research brokering and boundary spanning, co-location, secondments and role cycling, partnerships of all kinds, sustained interactivity…

The importance of context Interaction with other types of knowledge (tacit; experiential) Multi-voiced dialogue Use as a process not an event Moving away from ideas of packaging knowledge and enabling knowledge transfer – recognising instead: Addressing that in between