Public Engagement with Research

Being Human Festival: 2023 Evaluation

Flow Associates were commissioned to carry out an evaluation of the 2022 Being Human Festival, building on previous years’ research by assessing the impact of the festival for humanities reasearchers, the wider public, research organisations, universities, funders and cultural partners. We have shifted the focus of evaluation away from quantitative monitoring and towards a more impact and qualitative focused model, creating recommendations enabling the festival to:

• Become sustainable by identifying and understanding their visitors, creating an offer that keeps them engaged by visiting and supporting the festival
• Continue to develop their audiences
• Build new relationships, partnerships and collaborations

The Being Human Festival seeks to make contemporary thought, ideas and experiences connected with humanities research accessible to members of the public. The festival is run by the School of Advanced Study (SAS), University of London, in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and the British Academy. It extends participation to universities, museums and (university) libraries across the country and is a chance for each organising body to connect with their local arts and culture provision and to reach out to members of the public of all ages to engage with them in what it means to ‘be human’.

We undertook a large scale review of festival activity including:

1. Audience survey with c.2,000 responses
2. Event organiser surveys and interviews in the UK and Australia
3. Stakeholder surveys and interviews
4. Festival team, funder and critical friend workshop after the festival to reflect on findings and set strategies for coming years

Sustainable food: public attitudes and engagement in the UK,…

This research was commissioned by the Science Museum Group, supported by Lloyd’s Register Foundation. We in Flow Associates formed a research team with Flow India and People’s Palace Projects do Brasil, to consult adults, families, schools and professionals in the UK, Brazil and India to discover their knowledge and views about food sustainability, and how they could be engaged more effectively.

We were really pleased to carry out this important research. You can download the main research report from the SMG website here.

If you’ve arrived at this blogpost from a URL in the main report, you might be looking for the appendices. These provide full resources about our methodology, detailed research into the context of each of the three countries, and full accounts of our conversations and analysis of the online survey.

You can download the appendices from here:

https://flowassociates.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Sustainable-Food_-Appendices-to-main-report-Nov-2021-Flow.pdf

Do let us know what you think. We’re keen to carry on conversations and enquiries about public engagement in sustainability and wellbeing, in food and other areas.

PER Sandpit, MARCH Network at UEL

The MARCH Network is supported by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) to transform the understanding of social, cultural and community assets and how they support mental health. The Digital Community Assets and Mental Health Special Interest Group is one strand of research investigating what role digital platforms, services and interactions can have in building, reaching and supporting users and communities.

This sandpit brought together key stakeholders (including representatives from the third sector, the NHS, researchers and those with lived experience) to develop research proposals to investigate the role of digital platforms to promote and enhance engagement with community assets, and identify research priorities regarding how digital platforms are used and viewed in relation to community assets.

Using tools and models developed and inspired by the lenses in our Future Views toolkit we enabled participants to explore the diverse breadth of their expertise and the potential for collaborative working before consolidating them into priorities through discussions and activities.

Project Type: <span>Public Engagement with Research</span>

Being Human Festival: 2023 Evaluation

Sustainable food: public attitudes and engagement in the UK,…

PER Sandpit, MARCH Network at UEL