Open research practice
Improving the Mental Health and Wellbeing of Minoritised Communities in Nottingham
Research theme(s): Health Innovation
School: School of Social Sciences
Overview
The most important lesson is to cultivate honest and meaningful collaborations with our communities, so they feel empowered to be active drivers of the projects, instead of being the object of our research.
- Ana Souto, Penelope Siebert, Clive Foster
Tell us a bit about you and your research.
Clive Foster MBE: I am a social justice campaigner and founder of Nottingham Windrush Support Forum, and I serve as Vice Chair of the Windrush National Organisation. Recognised with awards for community impact, I have co-chaired the Integrated Care Partnership programme addressing health inequalities in BAME communities and advocate for equitable access to mental health services.
Dr Penelope Siebert: I am a Senior Lecturer in Health and Social Care at Nottingham Trent University. I have a special interest in the use of research that draws on principles of emancipatory research and the use of qualitative evaluation methodologies to inform the design and implementation of innovations aimed at improving health outcomes and addressing the wider determinants of health. My research has focused on improving health outcomes for marginalised populations, particularly through innovative participatory techniques to engage communities in co-designing solutions that foster inclusivity and resilience. I have led several projects that has focused on exploring needs from the perspective of those from minoritised groups communities, including exploring dementia care in African and African-Caribbean communities and investigating barriers to mental health services.
Dr Ana Souto: I am an Associate Professor in Architecture and Inclusive Teaching Practices. My research interest in heritage and identity, embraces my scholarship philosophy to work with Students as Partners. As a result, my aim is to facilitate interdisciplinary projects, authentic and meaningful collaborations based on participatory action research, and co-creation of knowledge with all those involved (colleagues, participants, students).
Tell us about a project you were involved in which used Open Research practices and principles?
We work on two projects which share a common goal, to improve access to mental health services for minoritised communities, and to record and disseminate the intangible heritage of diasporic groups, to improve their mental health and wellbeing.
We are committed to EDI projects which have an impact on the mental health and wellbeing of minoritised communities in Nottingham.
The aims of our research are to:
- To gain a better understanding of how minoritised communities access and use mental services;
- To improve knowledge and awareness of mental health services;
- To engage and involve members of the community in the co-creation and co-production of material on mental health that was reflective of the communities’ cultural, social and economic diversity.
- To explore the connections between heritage, wellbeing and social prescribing, and ways to measure the impact of heritage on wellbeing
- To enact, record and disseminate the intangible community heritage of these groups
Describe the open research practice(s) employed in your study. Why did you select them?
At the core of our practice is the creation of meaningful collaborations. We follow the principles of Participatory Action Research (PAR) and Students as Partners (SaP) that promotes a more inclusive approach to research which is non-hierarchical; celebrating lived experiences. These approaches recognise and celebrate different areas of expertise remove the idea of Principal Investigator and recognise the importance and necessity of all to the completion of the project.
We actively engaged with minoritised communities especially in the planning of the delivery: to co-design and co-deliver the workshops with community leaders, who took ownership on the activities, location and timings of the events. This is vital to set expectations of the research programme from the onset. Also, it demonstrates respect and value to the groups that they are not just being ‘talked at’ but they are actively inspiring the change.
We co-designed our research tools with students, embedding creativity in the collection of data. Our data was collected using three main tools: an individual questionnaire to explore notions of mental health and wellbeing; drawings, using the River of Experience where participants reflected on their lived experiences accessing mental health services in Nottingham; and co-designing of new material for the NHS. We presented the participants with posters and pamphlets from GPs surgeries, which are meant to direct the public to mental health support offerings in Nottingham. Participants redesigned this material to offer a more inclusive approach. We invited participants to draw ‘Rivers of Experience’ (2022) which supports a different way of communication, allowing a slower response and reflection; offering a more inclusive way of communication from people from diasporic heritages.
We jointly explored a plan for dissemination with community leaders and participants. We have disseminated our research in conferences, open access publications, blogs and websites: so that a broader audience can benefit from our research. This makes us more visible for non-academic audiences, future collaborators.
Did you face any challenges in the project, and how did you overcome them?
One of the main challenges of PAR is to promote meaningful and authentic collaborations with the communities). We overcame this by inviting community leaders to be the facilitators of the community engagement. These facilitators were identified by community connectors and by the community groups themselves. This was essential to create an open environment where people felt welcome to fully participate, to avoid consultation fatigue.
As a legacy of the project, it was planned for the communities to have ongoing ownership of their contributions. On the one hand, the community leaders identified the right times/ places for the workshops, and also suggested the outcomes expected by the community participants. For example, in the Outreach to Ownership object, the aim of Phase 2 was to create a website so the communities could disseminate their diasporic heritage, including recipes, fashion, dances, and oral histories. This also put all the control of the delivery of the workshops in the hands of the community and enabled them to make all the decisions, such as appropriate venues and refreshments.
Another significant challenge is the ethics approval system. Researchers must obtain ethical approval before starting collecting data, which removes elements of the PAR philosophy, highlighting the role of the academic (investigator) versus the role of the partners (participants). We are now exploring these issues as part of the activities of City as Lab, Engaging, researching and sharing lived experience.
What has been the impact of adopting open research practice(s)in your project?
Using a PAR methodology is very time consuming, since it is of upmost importance to build and maintain meaningful relationships when collaborating with communities.
However, combining PAR and SaP supports our interest in decolonising research methods and the curriculum, promoting inclusive teaching methods and work like experiences to our students, who may embrace these principles in their future careers. These practices make our research more inclusive and accessible, and to some extent reproducible, within the philosophy of PAR.
The most significant impact has been to create trustworthy collaborations and authentic engagement between all contributors to the projects.
What did you learn from making this project ‘open’? Do you have any advice for others considering adopting open research practices?
The most important lesson is to cultivate honest and meaningful collaborations with our communities, so they feel empowered to be active drivers of the projects, instead of being the object of our research. Building up these relationships results in trust, which in turn, generates more authentic generation of knowledge. For us, this is the most important output of these projects, instead of simply collecting and evaluating data. This is especially important when collaborating with minoritised and diasporic communities, and when exploring issues of mental health and wellbeing.
The most important advice is to be flexible and generous when engaging a PAR methodology. Minoritised communities often feel disempowered, left behind and used for research with no meaningful change in the process. Perceptions of rigidity, formality or being parsimonious is more of the norm for such groups so a flexible and generous approach to research yields greater collaborative outcomes. We believe this is a very important approach to research, despite the challenges that one encounters in the process. We also believe that it is very important to share this knowledge with our students, so they can embrace and extend the legacy of these approaches.
What are you working on now?
Penelope and Clive are working on a project to gain a better understanding of the services and interventions in place to screen, manage and treat hypertension in African and African Caribbean men.
Publications
Foster, C., Siebert, P., Souto, A. and Ekwenye, A. N. (2023) Interim report to the NHS. The Better Together Partnerships Project: Better mental Health Project.
Garratt, Charlotte; Souto, Ana; Ullathorne, Alice, Dunham, Laura (2023) ‘Partner interview: Heritage Lincolnshire’ Outreach to Ownership, Podcast Historic England
NTU Open Research Award Winner
This is an NTU Open Research Award Winning Project. In 2024, NTU launched the Open Research Awards to celebrate Open Research practice at NTU. The awards were designed to recognise any member of NTU staff – academic, technical, professional services, or postgraduate researchers – who demonstrated a commitment to using open research practices in their work.
Staff Involved in the Case Study
Ana Souto | Nottingham Trent University
Penelope Siebert | Nottingham Trent University
Exec Dean EDI Clive Foster MBE