Engaging new audiences

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Building interest with groups outside our own immediate discipline helps inject life and appetite into the subject area as a whole. Reaching new groups and communities can bring renewed energy and enthusiasm, which will in turn create new avenues of development and growth for the future.

Thoughts on engaging new audiences...

Alexan Bouaguireu
Community Participant
Anthony Kollie
Step Up
Antonio Benitez
Museum of Science & Industry
Erinma Bell
CARISMA
Ernesto Hernandez
The University of Manchester
Gerold Baier
The University of Manchester
Gillian Mawson
The University of Manchester
James Smith
The University of Manchester
Joanne Fitton
Bury Archive Service
Dr Joanne Pennock
The University of Manchester
John Helier
Community Participant
Kate Clanchy
Fiction writer
Dr Kevin Kane
University of Salford
Dr Kim Linton
The University of Manchester
Kooj Chuhan
Virtual Migrants
Linda Kirstein
University of Edinburgh
Professor Nancy Rothwell
The University of Manchester
Nicola Stone
Christie NHS Foundation Trust
Peace FM
Pharmacy Students (B Team)
The University of Manchester
Qi Liu
University of Salford
Ra Page
Comma Press
Ron Standring
Community Participant
Sam Ingleson
University of Salford
Sarah Fox
The University of Manchester
Sara Maitland
Fiction Writer
Sheila Whipp
Community Participant
Tony Lloyd
MP

Choose a participant on the left to hear their individual thoughts on the subject in relation to their Beacon Project

Alexan Bouaguireu

Community Participant

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From the fact that I’m coming from a developing country and I’m now trying to live in a welfare country, that has given me two different pictures of the same issue. From back home, we have a traditional view of the climate, of the environment itself but once you are in Europe for example you find out a different approach of the same environment. There is one thing I could point out- family, it is the way people are dealing with their life, dealing with the environment in a very, very narrowed way and that makes me think that, at the same time when they are there, they are caring of the environment here, they are not doing the same thing. Now down there they are helping to destroy the same environment. What we are doing here could have a big impact down there because we still have a chance to preserve a big part of a good environment which will be very, very interesting for all humanity.

Anthony Kollie

Step Up

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This type of project, I think it was to give people who live especially in the south of Manchester, Black and Minority Ethnic you know, members to have the opportunity to develop some leadership qualities and to be able to use that to maybe serve on strategic level. It is also to empower the community, to be aware of the opportunities so the Step Up was to give people the chance to go through some form of formal program and use the skills that they develop to provide service, either voluntary services to use or to have a job and it was a way of linking the university through their public engagement strategy with the rest of the community. We have somebody who actually worked with youth; we had one who, I think she’s a practice psychiatrist who actually worked within the community; and someone who worked within a local organisation that is working to empower young people who have vulnerable of getting into trouble. Then we had someone who is volunteering for the Muslim Association who were helping people in Palestine or wherever. So we had people from a range of organisations and communities. And I increased my network and also I increased the level of skills and new skills on how to work with groups to motivate them.

Antonio Benitez

Museum of Science & Industry

View Beacon Profile

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Well I think that is what the Manchester Beacon, what the Beacon for public engagement, is really trying to achieve. It’s about cultural change and it’s about changing perceptions. Obviously, you cannot change institutions from one day to the other but I think that the change has started and I can see the progress of the Manchester Beacon. So as I said it won’t change from one day to the other but we are already seeing the effects and the outcomes from the Manchester Beacon.

Erinma Bell

CARISMA

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Guns are not good and all we’re trying to do is educate people to that. At the end of the day, every partner who’s involved today has got their own networks, we’ve all got our own networks and so because we’re excited about this project, because we’re really interested in it, we then inform our networks and then that is what brings all the different people together from different walks of life and from different parts of the community. Today I’ve spoken to different ages, young people and old people, I’ve spoken to different ethnicities and I’ve spoken to you know, older people from different walks of life, even, I’ve spoken to people who are not even from the immediate central you know south central Manchester.

Ernesto Hernandez

The University of Manchester

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The highest point of this project is the contribution of linking together the values that are inside the walls of an academic institution, bringing them out and saying, let's see... now it’s time to link this knowledge with experience we have, with the people on the ground, from people coming from communities and countries who are bringing this knowledge and link it with the people who are having problems in their communities because they cannot fish, because they cannot work, because they have to migrate and this is very important because, as I say in one of the interviews, migration is a natural process and trying to stop migration is like trying to stop the waters of the sea with two hands.

Gerold Baier

The University of Manchester

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Gillian Mawson

The University of Manchester

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I've told the story to elderly people quite a lot, talks at museums, but I've never had a chance to speak to school children and I've had the chance to tell the story in different ways, to speak to the people. Also there were hearing impaired, visually impaired people there, and when they first walked in, I thought, how am I going to tell them the story about this suitcase? But I just relaxed into it and it just came naturally and I really enjoyed it, and they're people I'd like to work with again.

James Smith

The University of Manchester

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And so we kind of constructed this analogy of the corrosion summer ball. It all stems on the reactivities of metals was rated as how attractive you are and you know, they were dancing around the dancefloor and a better looking, more reactive metal would come along and you would displace him so he would have to go and sit on the side of the ball and watch everyone else having the party. So it all kind of stemmed from them. Corrosion is a multi-discipline area anyway so we tried to cover each area with one experiment.

Joanne Fitton

Bury Archive Service

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Doing this project really, I think, is the tip of the iceberg in the potential of Gill’s research and how it can engage the public and we really want to use this as a stepping stone then to applying to Heritage Lottery for more funding to be able to do more in depth research and to do the public engagement side of things as well. Our stakeholders would be the general public of Bury area, who, not a lot of them, would normally engage with an archive service in a traditional sense of wanting to do research themselves but they’ve got their personal story to tell and I’m not sure at first we realised how much public response we would get. We thought we might have a few people coming forward wanting to tell their stories but it has gone mad really. It’s been positive but it just shows that public engagement work does have knock-on effects.

Dr Joanne Pennock

The University of Manchester

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Well, I think with a normal health campaign you’d be reaching an awful amount of people but then you’d have to rely on the fact that they engage with the media or the way that the health campaign is put forward and I think here today, because it’s a one on one conversation, that actually the message becomes a lot clearer because it’s a two-way conversation and they’re allowed to actually ask questions and get more information. So I think from that point of view it’s very successful but obviously from a logistics and staff point of view it’s more difficult to do a campaign in this way but then each of them has family and friends at home so they’ll spread the word themselves I’m sure.

John Helier

Community Participant

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Well I’m amazed at your turnout because I didn’t think anybody would be interested.

Kate Clanchy

Fiction Writer

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Short stories have a very small audience but I suppose they are different from the science audience. I think that it is really important to communicate science well and not very many books can do that. All sorts of things are happening in science and we don’t usually have any idea of them so any kind of engagement is good.

Dr Kevin Kane

University of Salford

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I think in order to convey scientific ideas to members of the public, it’s important to engage with what they understand and what they experience on a day to day basis and take the steps from the present to the future or from the present to the underlying theory that represents what they see as the technology of their everyday life. Ice cream represents technology that helps in food safety, that represents underpinning science- the science of cooling, science of microbiology, the way that people engage with their food on a day to day basis so it’s an important nexus of a number of different factors in society and by picking on that, you can get through to people everything we do and everything we see and the way we conceptualise society is basically scientific.

Dr Kim Linton

The University of Manchester

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I think there have already been a lot of useful insights that we’ve gained from running these- what’s worked; what hasn’t worked; suggestions from clinicians, researchers and patients alike as to how we can actually do this better, particularly how we can better engage with the public; ideas such as hosting a seminar outside of a clinical setting is one very useful example; linking in with established groups that are already engaging with the public, like SureStart, rather than trying to reinvent the wheel ourselves; linking in more strongly with the patient representative groups who are used to dealing with patients in smaller forums and getting that message across; linking in more closely with the primary care physicians. These are all I think examples of how we actually can better advertise these events and better get across to a wider audience the potential benefits of clinical research. Another suggestion was trying to reach people through other forms of media. There has been a storyline on one of the big soap operas that highlighted a disease in a way that wasn’t necessarily accurate and many of our patients came to us and said, ‘Well that’s not how it is,’ and that made us think that actually getting involved with the writers of this particular soap opera and asking them to sort of run a clinical trial storyline, for want of a better word, might reach an audience that would otherwise not be proactive to attend a seminar, pick up a newspaper, go on a website and find out for themselves about things that may be of use to them in the future. But if it’s just portrayed in a way that is weaved into a storyline, that subliminal message gets across. That’s a creative way of potentially reaching people. It’s a very powerful way I think.

Kooj Chuhan

Virtual Migrants

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I think that science is a broad thing for a lot of people. They don’t realise in any conscious way that they are actually involved in scientific observations or observations of phenomena which can have scientific value. And so what we were interested in doing is not pushing people to say, ‘Look what you’re doing is scientific,’ but simply encouraging people to become more confident that this is valuable, that their observations of particular phenomena, of around the environment and climate. People are discussing their observations within a kind of framework that has value and is treated as data that can be analysed and that essentially is scientific and they’re are also aware that there is a scientist looking at that data as a part of a team looking at the data. They know what they’re doing but they don’t realise, it’s kind of reintroducing that there’s something scientific about what they’re doing anyway through the back door. I think that’s what we’re doing. What we’ve understood is that people do have, people who didn’t realise that they had observations that would parallel other people’s observations and also that those observations make sense above the personal level, that actually they are consistent with other people. So, for example, we had two people who don’t know each other at all, who are both were from Nigeria and they are from different parts of Nigeria but in the interviews they say almost the same things, in very different ways. So, even just two people doing that becomes quite powerful.

Linda Kirstein

University of Edinburgh

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It’s always really hard to know just what level to explain your science at and just what might be the right way of doing that. And clearly from talking with Sarah it’s important to get the basics right and then move on to the big picture, sort of niche stuff that you actually do, and so I think from that point of view it’ll simplify what I’ll do in the future which, hopefully, will have positive ways of explaining to the public what it is.

Professor Nancy Rothwell

The University of Manchester

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I think the future of public engagement for Manchester and its partners is extremely important. Manchester is a city that is vibrant and exciting but which hasn’t been engaged with its Universities and its museums as much as it could be and I think for the future, as we’re trying to broaden the participation of all aspects of everyday life, we simply must be listening and talking to our communities.

Nicola Stone

Christie NHS Foundation Trust

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There’s a lot of negative press about research and I think that there’s so much good that can come out of it. Not only does it help individuals now, but it can help patients in years to come. I think demystifying things is really important and involving people, it’s not exclusive to a certain group of people- it’s out there, it’s for everybody and it’s important that people have the information to empower them and make informed choices. And I think it’s made me think more about how to reach people. That’s something that I would like to think more about really and in that respect it is making me think more about the audience that you’re reaching, how to do that. The people who are probably more likely to want to come are those people who have been affected by it and who are not very well- your first priority might not to come to something like this but I think it’s important that the more we talk about these things, the more when it comes to your own health, not just in oncology but generally, people aren’t feeling that they’re alone really. It can help you form networks, it can make you understand terminology better but I think when it comes to your health, it’s really hard because you’re scared of questioning doctors, saying, ‘Is this right for me, what are my options?’ and I just think that it’s important to make people more aware of what’s available and that it’s not all bad and there’s so good that comes out of it as well and telling people this information is available, we’re not hiding anything.

Peace FM

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Well I think they can see how the communities come together, what projects are out there and how we’re out there to spread the word ‘peace’ in the communities and it’s good to see people come here and just talking to each organisation to find out what they’re about, even if it’s just one person who turns up, just as long as they’ve got the advice what we’re doing, it’s just a blessing so it’s good that we all can do more of these in the future, get more involved in it, you know, even come down to Peace FM and we’ll have a little talk about it, what’s it’s all about, on a bigger step.

Pharmacy Students (B team)

The University of Manchester

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We all have a big interest in medicine as we are Pharmacy students so as a result we wanted to increase the understanding of young people about certain medicines, in particular antibiotics, because at the moment there’s quite a lot of problems with resistance developing and being used incorrectly and youngsters not understanding when and why they should go to the doctor and when they shouldn’t, so we wanted to improve their understanding and maybe improve their participation in medicine.

Qi Liu

University of Salford

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I would say our station here is the starting point of the whole thing. I would like to give all myself to more activities, to show more research results to the public and gather more feedback from the public. Normally the support is from some organisation like Manchester Beacon and some funding organisations who will encourage us to do some work on the public engagement.

Ra Page

Comma Press

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The audience's reactions have been great. The fact that we, as an organisation, are inviting literary readers to come to a science event, it's almost targeted at those readers more than the scientists, so they have ownership of the project, and the product, because they are short story fans themselves, so it's kind of giving them permission to think about science in a way that they haven't been permissioned before.

Ron Standring

Community Participant

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Mr Fletcher, he had 3 grandsons. I’m the eldest one and it was through one of them, I think, who had the contact with Gill and they informed me of what was happening at the Fusiliers museum in Bury. Obviously I wanted to be involved in that because they said it was about grandpa as well and we met then and that was great meeting up for the first time there and talking about it and there was some pictures of him.

Sam Ingleson

University of Salford

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I think there’s been a wide range of public here today. I would’ve liked to have seen more people obviously, I think it’s important whatever you do it’s always nice to see more, but I think the people who have come have got a lot out of it and have stayed at this stage quite a while so I think that they fully engaged with the activities and, again, I would’ve liked to have seen more of the Stretford High School pupils here.

Sarah Fox

The University of Manchester

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It should open up doors I think, knowing people who are involved in this, to basically know what audience to aim at because I think there are some captive audiences around which we know we could get across to. I’m basically quite interested in tackling science and the media because I think a lot of it might be slightly misrepresented at points. I’m hoping if I actually get round to it being involved with the Beacons and Vitae I know that there is an audience out there who I could maybe aim for or I could maybe ask for help. I felt that my signs, people wouldn’t be interested in and well, it’d be hard to put it across but I mean there are ways of making it very accessible. I’d feel able to do that now.

Sara Maitland

Fiction Writer

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People love the Moss Witch story. The Moss Witch story which, in many ways, is more technically detailed than this story, I mean it’s very technically detailed on one level although it’s also a fantasy, it’s a fantasy about a person, a human thing who functions as if she were a moss, that’s really what the story is about and whose role in life is to protect mosses. I was really surprised. I mean, in the middle of the story, there are 8 lions with Latin names of mosses just babumbabumbabum. I was really surprised by how much people liked the story. The story was the runner up In the BBC competition last year, the BBC Short Story competition, and one of the judges said to me that they had never liked stories that were magical realist and they couldn’t believe that a story about moss could be interesting.

Sheila Whipp

Community Participant

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Actually it’s promoted some discussion in my family because my grandchildren have never really asked me any detail. They know I come from Guernsey, they’ve been to Guernsey, they know they’ve got relatives there and everything and I was an evacuee, but they don’t know the full story and now they’re asking me questions wholesale, saying, ‘Well, what did you do? Why didn’t Nana, why weren’t you with her? Why this, why the other, why Bury?’ About a year ago somebody asked me if I’d go and speak at this junior school because they’d been doing something about the war and I couldn’t go because I was going away and I thought, ‘Well I don’t think children would be all that interested or understand it,’ and now I think, ‘Of course, I missed that opportunity,’ but I thought small children in a junior school, but you see it’s good isn’t it because if in years to come they don’t really know or understand, if you get this information that’s quite personal, I mean they’ll hopefully be able to understand it which is really good isn’t it?

Tony Lloyd

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I think if you have the partnership working that I’ve seen today, what it does do is it probably engages very different audiences for different partners because, of course, those different audiences are brought into experiences they wouldn’t normally have. It makes, well, first of all the educational experience richer but it also means that the social exchange is a richer one as well and a lot of people today might have come in because they knew there was something around science taking place. They probably didn’t know there was going to be a message about guns and control of guns on our streets.

Challenging perceptions

Sometimes the most exciting insights come from the most unexpected places. Not from using tried and tested methods to build on existing knowledge, but from having to re-examine not just what we know but how we came to know it. Stepping outside the comfort zone of the laboratory or lecture hall, and engaging in dialogue with seemingly unrelated worlds can be a valuable and inspiring experience, enriching and renewing the work we do.

Creative learning partnerships

Collaborating with unlikely groups can broaden horizons and connect with new audiences. Mixing handicrafts with medicine, youth with experience and fiction with scientific breakthrough, for a glorious fusion of genres, ideas and creative pathways.

Opportunities and Benefits

Working on new projects not only brings rewards in the short term, but can open up a series of networks and pathways that can lead to new levels of possibility and potential.

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