Learning about composite stories in Using Stories to Understand Systems workshop
Published: 13 November 2025
13 November 2025: On 6 November, the Centre for Public Policy hosted a public workshop as part of the ESRC Festival of Social Sciences, where participants learned about and created composite stories, a new way of bringing lived experience into research and policymaking.
13 November 2025: On 6 November, the Centre for Public Policy hosted a public workshop as part of the ESRC Festival of Social Sciences, where participants learned about and created composite stories, a new way of bringing lived experience into research and policymaking.
The workshop, Using Stories to Understand Systems, was led by Centre for Public Policy Research Associate Dr Thomas Rochow. It introduced members of the public and those working in policy, the voluntary sector, local government, and academia to composite stories.
The Centre for Public Policy is using composite stories in its current research project, The State of Poverty. The approach allows researchers and policymakers to consider the experience of those interacting with multiple policies and governance systems, whilst minimising the pressure on experts by lived experience to retell their stories and the ethical concerns that come with this.
In this workshop, attendees worked together, drawing upon data to develop composite stories focused on young people in contemporary Scotland, to illuminate the challenges they face and their experiences of the governance systems they interact with.
The stories produced were diverse, and highlighted a number of challenges some young people are facing, such as access to higher education, a shortage of well-paid labour market opportunities, mental health problems, and a lack of safe and affordable spaces for young people to socialise. Each story was grounded in the governance challenges and how decisions made at different levels of government shaped the youth transitions of different groups of young people across Scotland.
Composite stories can be used across many areas of research and policy and provide a new way of exploring lived experience in research and personifying multi-level policymaking from an individual perspective.
Thank you to all who joined us for this public workshop.
The event was part of the Economic and Social Research Council Festival of Social Science, an annual, UK-wide, free celebration of the social sciences.
The State of Poverty research project
Find out more about how the Centre for Public Policy is using composite stories in its research project, The State of Poverty.
Sign up to our mailing list
Keep in touch with the Centre for Public Policy – sign up to our mailing list to receive our monthly newsletter and hear about upcoming events and updates first.
First published: 13 November 2025
The event was part of the Economic and Social Research Council Festival of Social Science, an annual, UK-wide, free celebration of the social sciences.