Photovoice

We are carrying out interviews with people who live in Southwark and Lambeth and are from Black or other racially minoritised communities. Our aim is to understand your experiences and opinions on what may help people thrive. We are particularly interested in your social networks and resources within your community and how these support you.

We will use the information from our interviews to plan community mapping workshops and to inform strategic plans within local councils, as well as feeding back to local organisations such as Black Thrive and Thrive LDN, organisations which address the inequalities that negatively impact the mental health and wellbeing of Black people and ensure all Londoners have an equal opportunity for good mental health and wellbeing. They take a holistic approach to address the causes of mental ill-health and work closely with the NHS, the local council, the police, and the voluntary sector to make sure change happens within these institutions.

The areas that we will discuss in these interviews come from working with communities in Southwark and Lambeth (through our own engagement and community consultations, and engagement by our partners from local organisations and local councils).

Before you decide whether to take part, you can speak to one of our team. Get in touch today and we can answer any questions you may have.

Photovoice offers people in the community an opportunity to use photography to talk about everyday experiences. It is a participatory research method in which individuals are given a voice through using photography to communicate issues important to them and effect change.

We will be running several photovoice groups. These photovoice groups will involve (up to 15) community members and 3 facilitators and will be carried out in a workshop-style format. The participant photographers will undertake a group training session which will focus on both photographic skills and guidelines, as well as ethical issues of informed consent, privacy, confidentiality, and anonymity. The photovoice workshops will be developed using the SELPh toolkit (South-East London Photography) and adapted to the projects research questions and research objectives. Some of the key components of the photovoice workshops, split across 6 weeks, will include:

Recruitment of community members and facilitators to the group. These can include community members that are already involved in the interviews and community mapping workshop components of the study.

Delivering an initial workshop and introducing photovoice. This will allow the group members to become familiar with the participatory method and understand the aims and objectives. In addition, it is important to highlight the ethical considerations through different scenarios and discussions and establish ground rules with the group.
Providing group members with cameras so that they can take photographs based on the initial workshop and related discussions. The group members can then bring their photographs to a dedicated workshop session where they will have the opportunity to discuss their photographs with other members and share the stories and context behind the photos.
Organising a public engagement event in the form of a photography exhibition to engage community members and decision makers

Get in touch with us if you would like to take part!