Give us a Twirl!

The Observatory’s resource catalogue continues to grow, giving policy and decision makers across the West Midlands improved access to data and research to support evidence-based decision making.

The development and growth of the catalogue has been achieved by working in partnership with West Midlands and sub-regional organisations to help share and publicise data and research about the West Midlands. Organisations such as Coventry City Council, Centro and Advantage West Midlands have all worked with us to share their intelligence through the catalogue.

There are two ways that you can contribute to the growing evidence base that forms the regional resource catalogue. You can either submit full details of the data or research, or recommending a resource by sending us the title and URL and we’ll do the work for you – both through online forms on our website.

Last week, the number of resources in the catalogue passed the 3000 mark, and as we approached this milestone figure, an additional incentive was offered to Observatory staff in the form of a Twirl chocolate bar for whoever managed to submit the 3000th resource into the catalogue.

The submission of the British Chambers of Commerce report, Lost talent: Not in education, employment or training, was the winning submission contributed by the Skills Team’s Research Assistant, Philip Morton, and I’ll be popping out at lunch time to buy his prize!

Some of the other recent additions to the catalogue include:

• Cultural demand in the West Midlands
  provides evidence on patterns of participation in and demand for culture amongst residents/visitors of the West Midlands region
• Labour market and training experiences of older workers in the West Midlands
  shows that employers in the West Midlands are increasingly aware of the benefits of older job applicants when searching for recruits with personal qualities such as loyalty, experience and reliability.
• Patterns of economic and social inclusion in the West Midlands report and supporting dataset
  Analysing the differing factors which influence social and economic inclusion in different parts of the West Midlands.