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

Abstract

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.