This slideshow accompanies a workshop that supports researchers to develop creative public engagement strategies.

1. Creative Research Translation
for Wider Engagement?
Dr Katy Vigurs, CSPACE, Birmingham City University
@drkatyvigurs
katy.vigurs@bcu.ac.uk

2. How do we
disseminate our
research? What are
the traditional
methods?
Why do we
disseminate our
research? What are
the drivers?
Research Dissemination: Generating
Benefit & Value (Impact)?

3. Identify audiences?
Who should be
interested in your
research & why?
What groups can you
identify?
Write the headlines?
What are your key research
findings?
What did you find out?
Need to be clear & concise.
Thinking about your own research…

4. Creative research dissemination…

6. National Co-ordinating Centre for Public Engagement (2018) Images of Public Engagement

10. Workshops to
support social
researchers to turn
their findings into
board games

11. A research-based board game
Nicola Harding @NicolaAHarding

13. Other examples of creative
dissemination?

14. www.srhe.ac.uk/downloads/vigurs-katy-003.pdf
Tale from the field: the story of a research-informed comic

17. “University is a bit of a safe
haven and then you go out,
and you don’t know what’s
going to happen, whether
you’re going to be broke.”
“I live at home and I’d like to
move out but then I can’t do
that on just a McDonald’s
wage, well I could, but I’d be
stuck in that job forever.”
“The debt just hangs there like
a black cloud.”
Greater Expectations of Graduate Futures?
A comparative analysis of the views of the last generation of lower-fees undergraduates
and the first generation of higher-fees undergraduates at two English universities
What
formal
outputs
from
study?

18. Would
different
output
increase
interest?

19. This is what I said in my proposal: “I want to commission a student illustrator to
create four ‘visual vignettes’ (like grown-up comic strips) based upon the findings
from the Graduate Futures project to tell the story of the findings in a more
human, succinct and accessible way, which will aid wider public engagement with
the research.”
I submitted an internal
proposal to carry out an
‘impact strategy’. I budgeted £1500 to employ
one student artist.
Plus £300 for printing.
What was
initial
budget
based on?

20. Met with Course Leader
for BA Cartoon & Comic
Arts in January 2016.
Met his 30 final year
students and set a live
selection brief to recruit
one artist.
Gave the students two
anonymised interview
transcripts. They were
tasked with turning each
into a one-page comic
strip .
Four student artists
responded to the selection
brief.

21. Examples of student artists’ initial responses to the selection brief

22. Four students. Different styles. Alternative visual interpretations.
This developed my ‘graphic imagination’. I revised my plan from four ‘visual
vignettes’ to a full comic book.
I employed all four students artists. Realistic ‘industry’ payments negotiated.

23. Turning eight interview transcripts and the research report into a 30 page comic book.
Storyboards and script writing.
Researcher and student artists working together.
Negotiating the graphic representations and the order of the pages.
Division of labour.
Ongoing processes of interpretation.
Seeing the research through student artists’ eyes.

24. Comic strips in progress. Reviewing and editing draft hand-drawn work

25. I’d allowed four months to make the comic.
It took six months.
Support and flexibility were important.
We were all learning.

26. www.srhe.ac.uk/downloads/vigurs-katy-003.pdf

27. www.srhe.ac.uk/downloads/vigurs-katy-003.pdf

28. www.srhe.ac.uk/downloads/vigurs-katy-003.pdf

29. www.srhe.ac.uk/downloads/vigurs-katy-003.pdf

32. Processes of
disseminatio
n

42. Lucy Wright @research_artist

43. Lucy Wright @research_artist

44. Identify
audiences?
What groups will be
interested in your data &
why?
Write the headlines?
What are your key research
findings? Need to be clear &
concise.
Resource &
support needs?
What do you need to realise
alternative creative outputs?
Select methods of
engagement?
What are the ways you can
make your research more
visual & accessible for these
groups?
… possible creative pathways to impact?
Over to you and your research…
Timing?
When will be an
optimum time to
share your
findings?