Making an exhibition of yourself? Public engagement in a social science project

22 July 2010

By Hazel Burke

Following on from Anne Alexander's point I thought readers might be interested in our experiences of public engagement in a qualitative social science project. At first sight, qualitative research can seem less immediately media-friendly (there is often a distinct lack of shocking statistics and catchy soundbites) but taking a slightly different approach to public engagement can make for really interesting work.

As part of a recent project on family resemblances, we organised an exhibition at a local community arts centre. We ran a photo competition about family likenesses and displayed the winning entries, we worked with a local artist to produce new exhibition materials and we wrote about the main project findings in Plain English. As the project was funded as part of the ESRC's National Centre for Research Methods, we even had a methodology section where we explained in jargon-free terms what data we collected and why we did it that way, as well as giving visitors a chance to have a go at some of the methods themselves. It certainly wasn't easy, but it was definitely rewarding. 

We produced a toolkit about organising exhibitions about research with lots of practical suggestions based on our experiences. And we also have a short video of Katherine Davies, the project researcher, talking about public engagement activity throughout the project, including the exhibition.