Background: Creative methods/practices have been highlighted as helpful to develop more collaborative, equitable research partnerships between researchers and communities/public-participants. We asked artist partners to design four online workshops, one on each research priority area: school environments and mental health; wellbeing within the Somali community; air pollution; health data. We aimed to understand whether creative processes can enable public-participants and researcher- participants to meet in a neutral space to discuss a research theme and begin to build collaborative relationships through more equal engagement. Ideas could be taken forwards with seed funding, providing opportunity for collaboration to continue beyond initial workshops.
Methods: Different artist partners designed and facilitated four workshops. Evaluation data was collected on each workshop using participatory observation and fieldnotes, alongside chatlog data, and one-to-one interviews with 21 workshop participants, providing a contextually rich, comparative evaluation across four diverse workshops. Analysis was thematically driven.
Results: Artist partners took different approaches to designing workshops. The workshops began with introductory games and activities, and there was less emphasis on introductions of people's roles, with the intention to avoid hierarchical dynamics. Whilst public-participants enjoyed this, some researchers found it challenging and reported confusions over their workshop roles. Disrupting usual practice and challenging norms was not always an easy experience. There were examples where emergent, co-created knowledge was enabled. However, it was more challenging to facilitate longer-term collaborative research projects from the workshops due to different stakeholder priorities, and lack of staff time/ less sense of ownership for further work.
Conclusions: Creative activities can influence and impact the types of conversations between public-participants and researchers in a way that changes and challenges power dynamics, shifting towards public-participant driven discussion. Whilst deconstructing hierarchies is important, supporting researchers is key so that any discomfort can be productive and experienced as a vital part of co-production. Longer term collaborative research projects were limited, highlighting a need for facilitation beyond initial workshops, and a sense of ownership from workshop participants to take things forwards. Workshops like these may lend themselves well to research prioritisation. However, taking community-led ideas forwards within research funding landscapes remains challenging.
Keywords: Collaborative research; Creative activity; Creative partnerships; Participatory performance; Public engagement; Public involvement.
Create to Collaborate aimed to develop and facilitate creative public involvement workshops with members of the public, researchers, and community organisations, who were potentially interested in collaborating on a future health research project. We wanted to evaluate the extent to which creative, external facilitation by different artists could enable the development of more equal relationships and reduce power differences at the beginning of a research process. We worked with artists who designed and facilitated an online workshop, and community partners who helped recruit members of the public to increase diversity in participation. Then, we delivered and evaluated the workshops to understand different participants’ experiences. Four workshops are reported in this article, each focused on a different topic: mental health in school environments, wellbeing in Bristol’s Somali community, air pollution, and health data. We took observational notes at the workshops and conducted one-to-one qualitative interviews with 21 workshop participants. Feedback from public-participants taking part in creative workshops led by artist facilitators described them as ‘engaging’, ‘comfortable’ and ‘equitable’. Researcher-participants reported workshops as ‘open’, ‘inclusive’ and ‘engaging’, whilst also reporting some confusion over what their own roles were and how much they could contribute as academic researchers. The project demonstrates a need for further clarity, particularly for researchers, over what roles may be in setting up a collaborative relationship, and possible disparity in expectations between those attending in an employment capacity and those joining as a public-participant in their own time.
© 2023. The Author(s).