An evaluation of a public partnership project between academic institutions and young people with Black African, Asian and Caribbean heritage

This project (named Reinvent) aimed to promote Public Involvement (PI) in health research. Academics worked with a community group, the Eloquent Praise Empowerment Dance Company, to develop a community partnership with young people from Black African, Asian and Caribbean heritage communities. The goal of this paper is to evaluate the Reinvent project for key learnings on how to engage and build partnerships with young people from Black African, Asian and Caribbean heritage communities. Reinvent developed a steering group which consisted of five young people, one academic, a Race Equality Ambassador and the Director of Eloquent. The steering group co-produced an agenda for two workshops and the evaluation tools used. The content of the workshops included drama exercises, discussions on physical and mental health, nutrition and school-life, short introductions to the concepts of research and PI, and group work to critique and improve a video currently used to promote PI in health research to young people. The evaluation tools included using the ‘Cube’ evaluation framework, video-blogging and collecting anonymous feedback. Findings The responses to the ‘Cube’ evaluation framework were positive across all four domains (agenda, voice, contribute change) in both workshops. A few of the young people described having a better understanding of the meaning and practice of PI in a video-blog. The anonymous feedback suggested that the workshops had increased young people’s confidence in sharing their thoughts and opinions about health and PI. Reinvent has shown that academic institutions and young people from an under-served community can partner to co-design workshops and apply evaluation tools. Working with young people in an environment in which they were comfortable, and by researchers joining in with the activities that the young people enjoyed (such as dance), enabled more informal and open conversations to develop. More work is needed to build upon this project so that young people can feel confident and supported to get involved in PI activities relating to research. What were the aims of this project? This project (named Reinvent) involved researchers working with the Eloquent Praise Empowerment Dance Company to develop a partnership with young people from Black African, Asian and Caribbean heritage communities. The aim of this paper is to evaluate the Reinvent project for key learnings on how to engage with young people from Black African, Asian and Caribbean heritage communities in public involvement activities for research. How did we do this project? To plan the project we had a steering group with membership from young people from the dance company working alongside researchers. The steering group worked together to plan two workshops and agreed the tools to evaluate them. The content of the workshops included drama exercises, discussions on health, nutrition and school-life, short introductions to research and Public Involvement (PI) and group work to consider and improve a video promoting PI. The evaluation tools included answering four questions, video-blogging and collecting anonymous feedback using a post-box. What did we learn? The responses to the ‘Cube’ evaluation framework were positive across all four domains (agenda, voice, contribute change). A few of the young people described having a better understanding of the meaning and practice of PI in a video-blog. The anonymous feedback suggested that the workshops had increased young people’s confidence in sharing their thoughts and opinions about health and PI.