Why dramatic enquiry as a form of public engagement gave me my most enjoyable week as an academic

Guest post by Santosh Vijaykumar, Vice Chancellor’s Senior Research Fellow, Northumbria University

“It’s important to eat healthy but we also need sugars, although in moderation.” These are not the words of an expert on BBC’s Food Programme, but a Year 5 student at Chillingham Road Primary School in Newcastle, fidgety and impatient for the next activity to resume. And the caution came about not through a series of in-depth interviews by public health researchers such as myself, but through ‘dramatic enquiry’. Brad McCormick and Katy Vanden from Cap-a-Pie, the theatre company that developed this approach, describe it as one that “places participants in a fictional scenario where they are in-role from start to finish. They are placed in a situation where there is no clear ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ answer and where they have to express their own beliefs and values.”

Brad directing the drama

Over the course of a week, we conducted four such dramatic enquiry workshops with three schools in Newcastle, each session comprising approximately 30 Year 5 pupils (10-11 year olds). Although these workshops were part of the public engagement strategy of my ongoing ESRC funded project* that seeks to understand psychological drivers of confidence in probiotics products, we decided to explore broader themes beyond just probiotics. The aim – suggested by Brad and Katy and gladly welcomed by us – was to avoid a top-down health education approach, and instead utilise this engagement format to get children to think and talk about fundamental issues: why do they eat what they eat? Can food be healthy and unhealthy at the same time? Should the government control what foods we consume? What is the relationship between responsibility and choice in the context of food? We used these themes as a funnel to eventually involve the children in a discussion on probiotics.

Each workshop starts with the children seated in a semi-circle. As soon as they are settled, Brad catches them off guard. He starts shaking hands with one of them and says “I ate at your restaurant last week, superb!”, and then goes to another: “I read your article on raw food diets, so interesting!”, and so on and so forth, setting off a series of giggles or muffled peals of laughter among the children as they make sense of the goings on. Soon after they are informed that they are all members of the Food and Drink Committee of Arcadia (a fictional country) and are asked to take a pledge of allegiance to Arcadia. A series of dramatic games such as DilemmaRama, Shake Hands/High Fives and Stop/Go has now completely warmed them up to Brad and to each other. This lays the foundation for their enthusiastic participation in the ensuing small group activities, each of which is followed by a philosophical discussion or reflection.

The small-group activities include identifying and enacting their favourite dish in a freeze frame, contemplating what it means to be healthy, and explaining the rationale for why they agree or disagree with a certain food policy from different viewpoints (as a journalist, scientist, manufacturer, etc.). In the second half of the session, they are introduced to a fictional probiotics product, to develop a commercial for it, and then asked to make a decision about whether it should be sold after exposing them to news articles reporting conflicting evidence related to the health effects of probiotics products.

As a researcher, observing these sessions live can be tough – it’s so much fun, you want to participate with the kids and leave taking notes for later. And taking notes is not easy either, even after you have committed to it. For, you realise quickly that every activity and philosophical discussion reveals a new strand of thought among children, a sharp, counter-intuitive insight, or a larger ethical perspective. As someone who is newly baptised to this form of public engagement, I realise how uninhibited and enthusiastic kids are in terms of participating in what would seem tricky terrain for adults, and how even seemingly quieter kids volunteer to voice their opinions. I am beginning to understand how this approach lends itself to unearthing perspectives of greater complexity and nuance than a traditional research method, such as a survey or experiment would. Essentially, if one were to invest in dramatic enquiry as a means of formative research for investigating a public health problem, they would reap a rich, and dare I say endless harvest of research questions worth investigating in a format that’s fun, engaging, and revelatory.

If you are waiting to know what we learned from these workshops, I will share links to a podcast series (on this blog) sometime over the next few weeks. These podcasts will give you a more detailed idea about dramatic enquiry, how the participating children benefited from it, and some perspectives that emerged about how kids perceive scientists, media, and the industry that really surprised us.

When I first arrived into the UK academic environment in February 2017, public engagement seemed a policy or media interfacing, translational exercise for researchers. Being involved in dramatic enquiry has now broadened my personal understanding of public engagement and triggered a cascade of ideas about creative ways to get a conversation going with communities whose lives we seek to positively influence through public health research. And, without a doubt, it has given me my most enjoyable week in eight years as an academic. Brad and Katy deserve some chocolate cake, but in moderation.

*Acknowledgment: This project was funded by the Consumer Data Research Centre, an ESRC Data Investment, under project ID CDRC 085, ES/L011840/1; ES/L011891/1.

A nation stood still for 25 years: Can we find solutions for action in policy and practice?

Guest post by Ben Rigby (pictured), a postgraduate student in Durham University’s School of Applied Social Sciences and Associate Member of the Wolfson Institute of Health and Wellbeing Research



Fourteen – the number of pieces of legislation published since 1991 which specifically state ‘physical activity’ (PA) in the context in which Public Health England presents as a problem needing a long-term solution. That is, an unsustainable burden on the UK economy, resulting from diminished health and well-being, which may be alleviated by increasing population-level PA.

 

I want to help do something about this problem. For the next few years, I will be undertaking a North East Doctoral Training Centre ESRC-funded PhD to research how PA-related practice, evidence, and policy interact to benefit or disadvantage different population subgroups. This project will be supervised by both Dr Emily Oliver and Dr Caroline Dodd-Reynolds, co-directors of Durham University’s Wolfson Institute Physical Activity Special Interest Group. 

Although advances in public health policy and evidence have emerged, not least through the work of the Fuse’s Physical Activity Group on improving evaluation and translation, for example, there remains a clear disconnect between use of evidence, proper evaluation and the influence (and interference) of policy and politics in decision making and the provision of activity opportunities. Having worked for Hampshire’s County Sport Partnership for the past year, these are issues I have experienced first-hand.

 

As a practitioner, it was often difficult to translate available evidence into viable practice. Reasons for this were numerous, though included funding issues, difficulty in physically accessing research, as well as in understanding complex ideas of theory and evaluation, within the particularly vague policy context by which one was guided. Emerging literature also highlights issues in policy, such as failing to consider local implementation barriers, persistent participation inequalities or the intricacies of behaviour change.

 

The aim of my research will be to identify systems and opportunities that facilitate a more integrated relationship between PA evidence, policy and practice. In order to garner a holistic appreciation of these factors, it is vital to understand how policy makers receive, adapt and adopt evidence; how organisational factors constrain or facilitate its adoption and importantly, recognise values and interests of those influencing responses to the evidence or policy problem. A particularly neglected policy research topic has been individual or organisational capacity to act upon evidence.

 

Previous research has perhaps been somewhat one dimensional in these areas. Alternatively by employing a mixed-methods approach and my applied social sciences background, I will be able to generate a much-needed complex understanding of the extent that local, regional and national stakeholders use evidence in PA policy design and implementation, and review factors associated with successful policy implementation. Whilst building upon existing literature, it is intended that this will offer a unique interpretive perspective on people, practices and policy processes (both locally and nationally), enabling and supporting policy development and implementation.

 

Does sitting and talking, and a lack of progressive
 policy action, promote our sedentary society?

Specifically by investigating the following two core propositions initially, I propose that it may be possible to find equitable solutions for progress in increasing physical activity and provide an important contribution to the field of public health research:

1. Weak evidence results in inherently conflicting and ambiguous PA policy, thus constraining implementation efforts
2. Political entrepreneurs may offer more effective solutions for policy development and implementation 

Being a fledgling researcher
One of my relatives (a PhD recipient herself), once told me that doing a PhD will be the hardest thing I ever do. I am under no illusions about the task before me, the complexity of which may be compounded by investigating one of society’s most entrenched problems. However I welcome the challenge and cannot wait to get stuck in, even if a little part of me wonders if I have what it takes to make a difference in the world, as I am sure many new Social Policy researchers before me have. I hope that my research will land well and have impact in the academic sense, but also in tangible real life outcomes for local communities in time.

 

I am not alone in this quest, and hope over the coming years to work closely with Fuse and its focus on Translational Research; specifically, the Fuse Physical Activity group offers an important platform for me to engage with physical activity policy makers, practitioners and academics who I hope will engage with me in developing this programme of work. I believe research evidence should be free and accessible wherever possible, an issue I have already raised. I wish to experiment with how better to present evidence to make it attractive to both policy makers and practitioners. At the same time, I am conscious of having to develop my academic reputation and profile and balancing this with experimentation is something I am wary of at this stage. 

 

I wish to build networks within local institutions with like-minded students and academics to share ideas and findings. My aim is to disseminate throughout my project and beyond. I hope to be able to present to Fuse research fora, access advice and support from the group’s members, as well as contribute to this blog. I welcome any feedback on this post. In particular I would be delighted to hear from individuals, practitioners or groups who:

• have shared research interests
• are responsible for PA-policy production locally
• research health inequalities
• had difficulties implementing policy guidance and evidence
• believe research in this area may benefit their line of work

Ben can be emailed at benjamin.p.rigby@durham.ac.uk. He is also on Twitter, LinkedIn and has a blog.

 

Notes and References:

1. Figure taken 27 June 2016 – using the search term ‘physical activity’ at http://www.legislation.gov.uk. Between 1991 and this date 72,088 pieces of legislation were published. Results were manually screened and filtered for ‘physical activity’ as recognised by the World Health Organisation as benefitting health, well-being and personal and social development.
2. Bowen and Zwi.2005. Pathways to evidence-informed policy and practice: a framework for action.
3. http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/john-prescott-battle-jeremy-corbyn-8720209.

Successfully reuniting planning and health

Posted by Tim Townshend, Fuse Associate and Acting Head of School, Director of Planning and Urban Design at Newcastle University

On Thursday 7 April I chaired an event that was jointly a Fuse Quarterly Research Meeting (QRM) and the fourth in the ESRC funded seminar series entitled ‘Reuniting Planning and Health’. It was the culmination of quite a few months of preparation and though it’s not the first such event I’ve organised it’s always a bit nerve-racking on the day – will all the speakers arrive? Will the participants enjoy themselves? Will lunch be any good?! As it was I needn’t have worried about a thing.

The day kicked off with a great overarching review of the need for planners and health professionals to work more closely together from Laurence Carmichael, Head of WHO Collaborating Centre for Health Environments – showing that while there is a lot of momentum behind the initiative there is much work still to be done. We then went north of the border with a presentation from Etive Currie, Glasgow City Council, who has been working on healthy planning initiatives for many a year – Etive’s presentation was full of amusing anecdotes about how local communities are not always initially receptive to such ideas! However there were also lots of really good news stories about individual lives that had been turned around. This was followed by Lee Parry-Williams, Public Health Wales, who gave a very informative overview of progress with Health Impact Assessment (HIA) in Wales – and also some insights into how political rivalries can stand in the way of real progress!

After a short coffee break, we had three further keynotes, Prof Ashley Cooper, University of Bristol – gave an excellent presentation setting out the complexity of linking children’s activity patterns to the built environment – it clearly demonstrated that for planning to deliver environments that are more supportive to healthy lifestyles, the research behind interventions needs to be extremely robust. Lesley Palmer – Chief Architect, Stirling University’s Dementia Services Development Centre, gave a really thought provoking presentation on how to design with dementia in mind – highlighting sufferers’ altered sense of reality – while showing elegant design solutions that could be incorporated into any environment that seeks to be age-friendly. The final presentation came from Gary Young, Director at Farrells, exploring the NHS Healthy Towns Initiative – including some of the initial housing at Bicester – a great talk to end with as it brought together so many key strands.

In the afternoon there were four interactive workshops – ‘The Casino’ a theatre based workshop run by local group Cap-a-Pie, explored how a proposed regeneration project for a run down seaside resort might impact a local community by actually asking participants to step into the shoes of the community themselves – an experimental methodology – it seemed extremely well received by those who took part. Jane Riley, Joanna Saunders and Carol Weir a team based at Leeds Beckett University gave a great workshop on the ‘total systems approach’ to obesity prevention – with participants asked to think about how they could make a real difference in their own work – quite a challenge! Douglas White of the Carnegie Trust did an excellent presentation on the Trust’s ‘Place Standard’ tool – which I’m sure participants will be using in future projects. Finally Pete Wright’s team undertook a kind of speed dating event so that participants could become familiar with various aspects of the MyPlace project based at Newcastle University’s OpenLab.

I observed all for at least a short time and was really impressed as to how participants became quickly absorbed – all the workshops were clearly thoughtfully prepared – the feedback overwhelmingly positive – so my huge thanks to all the organisers.

All round it was a fantastic day and all ran very smoothly – thanks very much to Terry, Ann and Peter the Fuse support team for all their help! And to The Core – it’s an excellent venue.