Gabriel is an independent adviser on community involvement, engagement and development. He directed research and policy at the Community Development Foundation for many years. He has been a leading adviser to government on community engagement and involvement, and from 2005-8 he worked on empowerment in the Home Office and the Department of Communities and Local Government. He worked with Colin Miller on the HCA’s ‘Empowerment Skills for All’ project, 2008-10,  was one of the founders of the Health Empowerment Leverage Project (2009-10) and is working with Community Places on new strategies for local authorities in Northern Ireland (2010).

He was awarded an MBE in 2009 for his services to community development

Gabriel has worked in teaching, educational research, local arts development and community development. In the 1990s he carried out pioneering European research on the role of local citizen organisations (Out of the Shadows: Local Community Action and the European Community, European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions, 1992), and  the first EU-wide study of community involvement in regeneration (Community Involvement in Urban Regeneration: Added Value and Changing Values, European Commission Regional Studies 27, 1997).

In 2002 he carried out a study of Measures of Community for the Home Office, and in 2003 a study of community involvement in urban policy for the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (Searching for Solid Foundations: Community Involvement and Urban Policy, ODPM, Sept 03).

Much of Gabriel’s work has focused on creating evaluation frameworks for work carried out in local communities in order to move the community development occupation onto a more objective, evidence-led basis. The local government framework for 2008-11 opened a new chapter in the relationship between community work and mainstream social issues by including community strengthening amongst the objective outcomes. This has furnished a wealth of new data with the potential to reveal how local community activity affects health, education, housing, employability, social cohesion, equality and the overcoming of poverty and crime.