Session overview
The Research Forum brings DIN members together for three focused, 90-minute online sessions, each centred on a real challenge facing the housing sector. Sessions are interactive, grounded in lived experience, and designed to be immediately useful.

You’ll work with peers to explore how research, data and everyday insight can better inform decisions, shape services and support clearer, more purposeful action—without needing extra time, budget or complexity.

The emphasis throughout is on clarity, curiosity and practical tools you can use straight away.

In our next DIN Research Forum session, we’ll explore how to move beyond data-heavy dashboards and towards a richer, more meaningful understanding of what’s really happening across housing services.

Dashboards, KPIs, and measures like Tenant Satisfaction Measures (TSMs) provide important signals-but on their own, they offer only a partial view. This session introduces a different approach: using data as a starting point for curiosity. By asking better questions of the numbers we see we can uncover the qualitative insight needed to build a more complete and realistic picture.

Joined by guest speaker Chris Bolton (Chair, Merthyr Valleys Homes), this session focuses on the art and discipline of telling stories with data. Together, we’ll unpack how organisations can bridge the gap between quantitative metrics and the lived experiences behind them-turning numbers into insight, and insight into action.

Through practical examples and discussion, we’ll explore how conversations with tenants, frontline staff, and across services can add depth, context, and meaning to performance data. The result is not just better understanding, but the ability to construct compelling, evidence-based stories that resonate with managers, boards, executives, and wider stakeholders.

What we’ll cover:

- Why dashboards alone can limit understanding

- How to use data to spark curiosity and ask different questions

- How to combine quantitative and qualitative evidence into a coherent story

Key takeaways:

- A practical approach to moving from “what the data says” to “what’s really going on”

- Greater confidence in using data to ask meaningful, curiosity-driven questions

- The ability to communicate insight as clear, compelling stories to decision-makers

- A stronger foundation for tackling complex challenges across your organisation

About the speakers

Dr Rob Rowlands – Curator of Curiosity & DIN Researcher in Residence
Rob is DIN’s Researcher in Residence and a thinking leader who helps organisations turn evidence into actionable insight, equipping teams to make confident, practical decisions and deliver meaningful impact. With around three decades’ experience working in and around housing, he understands how research needs to fit the real world—messy, pressured and full of competing priorities. (www.robrowlands.co.uk)

Paul Taylor – Innovation Coach, Bromford Flagship
Paul is the Innovation Coach at Bromford Flagship, where he helps drive the strategy for one of the UK’s largest housing associations. A recognised pioneer in the sector, he’s best known for giving up a “proper job” in 2014 to launch the social housing sector’s first dedicated Innovation Lab—a move that fundamentally changed how housing providers approach problem-solving and service design.

Cost
Included as part of your DIN membership.