Coproducing justice in public involvement: impact-led iterative development of a dance based community engagement project building relationships in marginalised communities.

BACKGROUND

Public involvement must include people from diverse backgrounds, or it risks exacerbating health inequalities in prioritising the needs of the majority culture. Public involvement as a process tends to exclude people by being tailored to fit the norms of the dominant culture; therefore simply removing barriers to participation is unlikely to be effective as is the case in other areas of science engagement. Rather it is necessary to go beyond redistributive justice (fair distribution of resources, opportunities, and benefits within health research) towards relational justice (developing respectful, reciprocal relationships and fair treatment within the research process and seeking to develop models of involvement that are meaningful and appealing to all groups).

METHODS

An action research approach was applied to the iterative development of an arts based participatory community engagement project to engage South Asians in Leicester, particularly women from inter-sectionally deprived neighbourhoods. Seven action research cycles were completed between 2017 and 2024, of which the first five are reported here. Data collection and analysis are summarised in Supplementary Table 01 and a project summary can be seen in Supplementary Fig. 01.

RESULTS

The impacts of the project were considerably broader than simply developing engagement with, and access to under-represented communities. The project was empowering for participating women and supported the development of social capital. It is emphasised that this is an impact associated with participatory community engagement that moves in the direction of coproduction.

DISCUSSION

Community engagement using an arts-based approach was effective at engaging under-represented communities in health science involvement. It also offered the potential to build social capital that impacted health inequalities in tangible ways aligned with macro-level policy. Community engagement can also therefore be viewed as an efficient use of investment in offering significant added value.