Time: 11:15 – 12:30
Location: Mendel (Ground floor)
Presentation type: Workshop
Theme: Data, Statistics and AI Literacy for Meaningful Public Involvement
Chair: Caroline Brocklehurst (Public Partner)
Workshop leads: Gail Faragher (1), Erin McCloskey (1), Hilary Tetlow (1)
1 University of Liverpool
Abstract
Secure health data environments and the use of AI are unfamiliar phenomenon in the public domain (Knowles and Richards, 2021). To counteract this, the Civic Data Cooperative (CDC) built a model of participatory data stewardship and celebrated the completion of a 5 year programme with the Festival of Data (February 2026). They invited creative practitioners to collaborate on public engagement ideas for a data festival; commissioning them to produce art installations to creatively represent local data sets. Participants learned about the significance of the determinants of health, particularly place-based clusters of health inequalities in the Liverpool City Region, through the stewardship of quality health data. Creatives then interpreted initial public workshops with 240 primary school children to create installations which offered their families and members of the public points of inspiration to discuss these issues.
A festival collaborator, the Mental Health Research for Innovation Centre (M-RIC), worked with artists and public members to create a ‘brain’ installation as a simple talking point for visiting young families. In Liverpool, participation in mental health research is under-represented within many groups, partly due to the persistent stigma of people not wanting to talk about their mental health. PPIE coordinators and public advisors asked the public ‘how do you start to talk about mental health research?’. Intended to be fun, children and young people explored the ‘brain’ space, stepping inside and interacting with a mood enhancing song playlist.
The PEDRI workshop is a practical hands-on guide to support the planning of a large public engagement event aimed at families. Workshop leaders from the CDC and M-RIC will discuss how to manage audience participation and stakeholder relationships. It will provide a practical opportunity to ‘play’ with creative materials and gain knowledge of devising concepts to translate highly technical information in the health data sector.
(Knowles and Richards, 2021)