Evidence Cafes are a method of knowledge exchange that aims to bridge the gap between research and practice, enabling participants explore how research might inform their practice and giving academics access to the practice-based insights on the research from practitioners. Evidence cafes are characterised by two-way dialogue between practitioners and academics in which both emerge with changed understandings. In this sense, they are distinct from focus groups, workshops and presentations in which the flow of information is largely one-way. Evidence Cafes can be used to facilitate change within an organisation and lead to sustainable impact through the ripple-effects and follow-on activities they trigger. This paper is a short guide to the Evidence Cafe method, explaining how to organise, set-up, plan and run an Evidence Cafe, and how to avoid the pitfall of running just another workshop under a different name
