New York, NY—Today, Fedcap announced the launch of Spotlight, a multimedia research initiative from its Community Impact Policy Institute that takes research beyond the data and into communities confronting some of today’s most persistent social and economic challenges.

At the heart of Spotlight is Research in Real Time, an approach that follows challenges and potential solutions as they unfold. Researchers start with the data, then go into communities to hear directly from people, understand local conditions, and see how organizations and institutions are responding.

Combining quantitative analysis with on-the-ground research, interviews, and multimedia storytelling, Spotlight captures emerging lessons and promising interventions as they develop. The goal is to understand challenges from the ground up and bring what communities are learning directly to policymakers.

“Spotlight will help close the distance between communities confronting our most difficult social and economic challenges and the policymakers working to address them,” said Christine McMahon, President and CEO of Fedcap. “By taking research beyond the numbers and into communities, we can bring the experiences, ideas, and solutions emerging on the ground directly into the policy conversation.”

Research That Unfolds in Real Time

Research in Real Time is a more dynamic model of policy research. Each Spotlight brings together data, field research, community stories, interactive tools, video, podcasts, and policy analysis on a single platform.

Rather than waiting until the research is complete, Spotlight publishes as it learns. As findings emerge, it connects insights across people and places to identify patterns, promising approaches, and potential policy solutions.

The result is research audiences can follow as it happens, moving from the problem to the people and places experiencing it and ultimately to solutions that can inform policy.

Britain’s Unemployment Challenge: The First Research in Real Time Spotlight

The first Spotlight will go inside Britain’s unemployment challenge to understand where people become disconnected and what can reconnect them to opportunity.

The scale is substantial. For example, approximately 9.1 million working-age people are economically inactive, with almost one million young people not in education, employment, or training (NEET).

Spotlight will look behind those numbers at the people, places, and systems shaping them. The research asks what changes when public systems organize around a person’s journey rather than institutional boundaries. Unemployment is rarely the result of a single moment. People move across education, health, benefits, skills, employment, and local services. Institutions may see separate cases, but individuals experience one continuous journey.

The first phase will span Croydon, Doncaster, Basingstoke, Brighton, and Staines, following pathways from education and early disengagement through mental health, skills, employability, and sustainable work. Across these communities, Spotlight will examine where people become disconnected, what helps change their trajectory, and what those experiences can teach policymakers.

Turning Community Insight into Policy

Spotlight connects what policymakers see in the data with what people experience on the ground. National statistics show the scale of a challenge. Community research can reveal where systems break down, how people and organizations respond, and which interventions are making a difference.

In Britain, that means examining how education, health, skills, employment, government, and employers can work together more effectively to create pathways to sustained economic participation.

But Britain is only the beginning. Research in Real Time is designed to scale across geographies and issues, with future Spotlights applying the same place-based approach to other complex social and economic challenges.

“Traditional research often tells us what happened after the fact. Research in Real Time allows us to study challenges and responses as they unfold,” said Dr. Jim Malatras, Chief Strategy Officer and Senior Vice President of Education at Fedcap and Director of the Community Impact Policy Institute. “By combining data with place-based research—where we listen to communities, we can build a growing body of evidence about what works, where, and why, and turn those lessons into practical insights for policymakers.”

The initiative builds on CIPI’s Spotlight on Poverty & Opportunity, extending that work beyond poverty and economic opportunity in the United States to a broader range of social and economic challenges.

Visit Spotlight: Breaking Britain’s Barriers here. Be part of the conversation at #BreakingBritainsBarriers.