Spotlight on community engagement and involvement (CEI): Bridging the gap between researchers and communities - The role of community connectors in CEI

In this third episode of our series, you’ll hear from community connectors working in South Africa who play key roles in bridging the gap between research and communities. They are joined by a CEI consultant from the UK and host, NIHR's Gary Hickey. This episode focuses on exploring what connectors do, and the crucial role that they can have in ensuring effective CEI in research. The guests also share their top tips for people looking to work with connectors to improve CEI in their own projects.

For further information on connectors on the Mesh website, visit: https://mesh.tghn.org/themes/connectors/

If you’ve listened to any of our podcast series on community engagement and involvement (CEI), we'd love to hear what you think!

Share your thoughts with our survey: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdzm5ZYyCjF7VhVQs4cidrQJR6ck1z5xdVB5_s_xgiLb1UdEg/viewform

Please note these podcasts were recorded in early 2022. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the host and guests and do not necessarily reflect those of the NIHR or the Department of Health and Social Care.

Transcript

Podcast series: Spotlight on community engagement and involvement: Improving global health research and outcomes through engaging with local communities

Episode 3: Bridging the gap between researchers and communities: The role of community connectors in CEI

Speakers: Helen Latchem, Gary Hickey, Nabeel Petersen, Tasha Koch

Gary Hickey  00:07

Hello my name is Gary Hickey, I work for the National Institute for Health and Care Research. Welcome to our podcast series Spotlight on community engagement and involvement: Improving global health research and outcomes through engaging with local communities. So why are we doing a podcast series? Well the National Institute for Health and Care Research, an organisation based in the United Kingdom funds research both in the UK and globally. And in the global health research we fund, there is an expectation that there'll be community engagement and involvement in the development and the delivery of this research.  But what does that mean? And what does good community engagement and involvement look like? What's worked well and what hasn't worked well? Well, that's what we want to explore in our podcast series. So, we'll be talking to community engagement specialists, members of the public and researchers from across the world to explore their experiences and opinions on all things community engagement and involvement. And hopefully, we can all learn and improve from the experiences and opinions of our podcast guests. And today, I'm delighted to be joined by our guests from South Africa, and from England in the United Kingdom, who are going to talk about Connectors in Engagement. So from South Africa, we have Tasha Koch who’s a co-founder and director of Eh!woza.  Hello, Tasha, and how are you?

Tasha Koch  01:30

Hi, Gary, how are you? Nice to be here.

Gary Hickey  01:33

Thank you very much. And we also have from South Africa, Nabeel Petersen, who's a Wellcome Trust international public engagement fellow, and a co-director at Pivot Collective, and director at Interfer. Hello, Nabeel 

Nabeel Petersen  01:46

Hi Gary. Hi, everyone. It's really good to be here.

Gary Hickey  01:50

And from England in the UK, we have Helen Latchem. And Helen is a freelance community and public engagement consultant, based in the UK. Hi, Helen.

Helen Latchem  01:59

Hi, Gary. And hi, everyone. Thanks for asking us today.

Gary Hickey  02:03

Fantastic. To begin then, we're going to start with an icebreaker. So I'm going to ask Tasha, first, please describe - paint a picture for our listeners - of your country.

Tasha Koch  02:14

South Africa is a really I was thinking about this earlier, it's a really diverse country, which I think a lot of countries can say. So there's a lot of really beautiful aspects to South Africa. It's got really beautiful terrain, and lots of diversity around that. But there's also some really difficult aspects to South Africa. So it's also a very unequal society, which gives us a lot of challenges. And then I'd say that in terms of the people, most South Africans are really friendly people. You know, throughout the country, we are known for being an incredibly friendly nation, and welcoming nation. So that's the picture of South Africa, a lot of good, but some very bad and big challenges. Yeah.

Gary Hickey  02:58

Thank you, Tasha.  And Nabeel is that a picture that you recognise?

Nabeel Petersen  03:02

Yes, pretty much. I think Tasha has hit it on the head. So I don't think I might have too much to say. But I do think that, yes, we are completely and almost horribly sarcastic. As people we like, we like joking around. But at the same time, we are probably the most European country of Africa. So we do attract a lot of attention, multicultural, multilingual, but at the same time, highly problematic and still very much segregated. So a lot of important conversations are pretty much still hidden within South Africa, which I think as you’ll learn features into a lot of our work and the why we do this kind of work.

Gary Hickey  03:42

Thank you Nabeel.  And Helen, would you like to describe sunny England?

Helen Latchem  03:46

Yeah, I mean, I think us Brits are also quite sarcastic, which is probably why we've all worked in partnership quite well together on this project. But yes, the United Kingdom. Yeah. So I live on a small, damp island in the northern hemisphere. I think we're probably quite considered quite an eccentric nation, probably with some lasting delusions of grandeur, about our status in the world. Yeah, but on the whole, it's green and beautiful in places, and I grew up on a farm, up on the border with Wales. So I have a real love of the countryside here. So yeah, I feel affectionate about our little island. Thank you.

Gary Hickey  04:26

Thank you. Well, welcome all. I'm really pleased that you've all prepared to give up your time today. So we're talking about connectors in engagement. So I'm going to start off and ask you Nabeel, tell me what or who is a connector in engagement?

Nabeel Petersen  04:43

Yes, great question. So I think I'm going to ask my colleagues to chip in wherever I can.  The way we've conceived our connectors in research, we've been thinking of people, entities, institutions, and collectives, and also especially creatives that work on this intersection of research and the public or if I could say publics, often we are addressing very different audiences. And often these entities of people have a very unique skill set, but also informal or formal knowledge that can be situated within this space. So we are uniquely positioned to address a lot of issues within research when it comes to accessing different spaces. Often a lot of connectors are looking at the fringes of this conundrum. So we often, I would say, used within existing projects rather than have been collaborated directly with. So with our work, we try to support and connect, connect or design bridges that allows people to speak to each other and to collaborate more directly. And I think often, connectors have unique insight, whether it be lived experience or the networks that they engage with to address problems in projects specifically. And connectors I believe, if I were to think from a macro perspective, everyone I've been speaking to have unique insight into the political, social and economic dynamic of specific spaces - I don't want to say communities and speak about communities as static - but rather, they have this unique ability to mash and mould and work between these seemingly competitive or isolated spaces. And that's what we've been trying to foster working with these people and entities, institutions and collectives.

Gary Hickey  06:27

Thanks Nabeel and where would we find community connectors, what sorts of people are community connectors, in terms of the organisations they come from?

Nabeel Petersen  06:35

So it's a difficult one because this word connectors is fairly new or novel, I don't think most people think of themselves as connectors. I think the term itself has emerged just from the thinking around people as connecting different aspects or facets of society. So most connectors might not see themselves as connectors. But they are working between different spaces. But it could be anything from creatives that are used or working on specific projects, to independent researchers, or maybe different mobilised community based groups that are often working to connect, in this case, health research and publics. Yeah, so it's a term that is more emergent than than defined itself.

Gary Hickey  07:23

Thank you very much Nabeel, I'm gonna ask now, I’m going to ask Helen, what benefit do connecters bring in terms of community engagement and involvement in research?

Helen Latchem  07:34

Yeah, sure. I mean, for me, I think, immense value.  I think there's immense value in interdisciplinary collaboration in lots of projects. But I think particularly engagement. As Nabeel said, I think, you know, they can bring this kind of alternative perspective to the research or health topic, a different way of looking at things. And quite often that kind of creativity, innovation, or new methods of engagement, which might not necessarily come to mind for researchers or research groups. And we've also said a little bit about, you know, these kinds of existing relationships with groups in the community, or ways of kind of reaching audiences. As Nabeel said, it's kind of it might not be connectors might not be a useful term for everyone, but because in engagement, we often talk about this gap between universities and research institutions, and the general public and local communities, these kinds of other people within these engagement within the engagement process they, they sort of bridge that gap, you know, through creativity through reaching existing groups, and so therefore, connectors seems like a nice term. But I think for me as well, it’s this sort of different expertise and knowledge, professional experience, also time, you know, researchers can't do everything themselves, so actually working with others is really important, you know, to kind of make projects happen.

Gary Hickey  08:59

Brilliant. Thank you, Helen. So we've spoken about the what they are and who they are, and indeed, the benefits. So could you talk us through an example of how it's worked in practice?

Tasha Koch  09.10

Yeah, so what I was thinking about is, I find connectors are really important in terms of collaboration. And this might sound a bit strange, but I think the project that I work on Eh!woza is a good example of a programme where connection and connectors are really important. And so it's a highly collaborative project that brings in people from lots of different spaces. And I really liked the way you refer to the experience of connectors and impressions around that Nabeel. And so Eh!woza  brings in artists and creatives, as well as people who live in the areas that we want to work in, to really give us insights into the lived experience and experiences of people who are affected by infectious disease. And then with the help of artists who have really, many of whom are really talented and have lots of experience in this reflect those experiences back to the world. And so it's as a biomedical researcher, so I'm trained as a molecular biologist, it's been really amazing to get used to and to see how people's impressions of disease are different across those spectrums. Yeah.

Gary Hickey  10:29

Lovely, thank you, Tasha.  And Nabeel, have you got an example of how it works in practice?

Nabeel Petersen  10:36

Yeah, I'm gonna stretch, for an example, because it's hard to isolate any but I'd like to think of connectors as potentially, the zipline that projects dress upon if you think of the zip line, and someone's hanging things on from one space to the other, connectors are often that line, but projects dress upon and I'm thinking of a project that I worked on, maybe about six, seven years ago.  The project sought to speak to about 400 civic structures across the nation. We were trying to understand who collaborates with who, for which purposes, how do these collaborations ultimately shift the landscape of the city, and then also of the country, if you will, and who collaborate with whom, on which grounds do people tend to build relationships. And I was brought on to the project, because maybe I'm a compulsive networker that is really, really interested in building meaningful relationships and how we and I'll always try to bring people together in different ways. So my job was to manage this entire process. And I believe I was brought on for those reasons. I'm interested in what a lot of these other organisations are doing, how they operate, why they operate. And I think in terms of that specific project, it was run by different institution that I was I was basically used to facilitate the process. I had a unique skill set, simply because I was always speaking to different people in very different neighbourhoods, often neighbourhoods that many people wouldn't walk into. So the strategy I used was to park a car in these different spaces and be as available to people as researchers expect, sort of people that they're working with to be available to them often naturally accounting for people's time. And yeah, so in that way, I was a connector, because of my skill set, wanting to understand why people or why these entities work on these issues or projects, why they do not work with each other, even though they are aligned in values, values, and themes. And I think it was a unique project for a person with a very specific skill set, because I could fast track that entire process because of previous relationships. So in terms of bringing it back to the connector’s role in that space, I think I had existing very broad network, I had a very broad interest in who was working on different issues and for why.  I was also interested in in trying to understand why these organisations that I know are on the same block in a specific community working on the same issues sourcing the same funding, why are you not working together? So often a lot of like connectors have their own curiosities about different processes and values. And I felt like within that specific project, I don't think it could be delivered if someone wasn't that interested in the exact question and had existing networks.

Gary Hickey  13:27

And you mentioned there Nabeel skill set, could you say something a little bit about that.

Nabeel Petersen  13:34

My skill set specifically, or connectors more broadly?

Gary Hickey  13:38

Connectors more broadly. But if you want to relate it to yourself, don't be don't be shy, be boastful if you wish.

Nabeel Petersen  13:45

So I think that it's a tough one. But I think connectors are generally highly flexible and adaptable, many times working within formality, but informally because of existing relationships and the way they've been practising before. So I think if I were to stretch for very broad synergies across the idea of connectors, I think it's adaptability. I think it's the willingness to be very flexible, but also is reflexive of your positioning within that space. So you've spent time in this space, you're really passionate about bridging gaps. And that's maybe where you were a bit of a social activist, perhaps, because you don't simply want to be engaged in research because of this body of work that exists before you. So I think the adaptability, flexibility, I think, also highly passionate, because often a lot of connectors have been doing this work without pay yet are maintaining an investment. And if I were to think of the work Tasha is doing, the work Helen’s doing a lot of is driven by pure passion. And a lot of things could not have emerged or done so without having that passion, but unfolding into an applied research sort of application.

Gary Hickey  15:01

Thank you Nabeel, thank you, Tasha. Now, the three of you recently ran a webinar series and you very kindly invited me to facilitate one of the sessions there which was absolutely great. And you did it as part of your organisation so Mesh, Eh!woza, Interfer it was that series on connectors in engagement. Can you tell us a bit more about that? And where people can find further information, Helen?

Helen Latchem  15:29

Yeah, so I manage Mesh, which is the Global Health Network’s knowledge hub, which supports people working in community engagement. The idea with Mesh is it provides a neutral online space where communities, these kind of community and public engagement practitioners, researchers, health workers, and other can share and access resources and come together as a professional network. So earlier this year, Tasha, Nabeel and I started working together on this project, really looking to support engagement professionals, creatives and freelancers. So these connectors, who often work within research engagement projects, because we've found that there's, you know, they were sort of sharing common challenges, successes, and learning, and there was a  kind of desire to come together to really further build their skills and experience. So we decided to run this event series online.  We still have a hope to have an in person kind of networking and sharing symposium next year in Cape Town, if we can, with the pandemic situation. But yeah, we wanted to kind of have these key discussions about our area of work to kind of document these challenges and opportunities and kind of look towards solutions where we could improve CEI for for all of us working in the field. And so we're really keen to establish a kind of active, supportive network, a kind of, sort of network of practice across Africa and across the global south to provide peer support in that area. So we held three participating workshops across September to November on a series of themes. And we carried out a consultation with the professional community before that through Mesh, to determine what people felt the most important issues were. So, we took quite a broad look at things. So we sort of started off talking about how you understand and define engagement and how we can begin to aim for true participation and co-production, which, as you said, was expertly facilitated by you, Gary. So I'd recommend everyone to watch that one in particular. But we also moved on to kind of, you know, talking about making this case, role of connectors, as we've talked about already, you know, where do they fit in the process? And what's the value of that? We also, for me, really importantly, talked about the power dynamics within collaborative projects, you know, who sets the agenda and, and how do we manage these different approaches and motivations within a team that come from lots of different perspectives. So yeah, so if anyone wants to access them, all the recordings, materials, illustrations of the discussions, and the presentation slides from the workshops are available on the connectors theme page on Mesh, I think for listeners, you'll be able to find a link on the podcast details to the connectors page, so you can find out more. And importantly, you know, they’re open access, they're free for anyone to access and use. And we're really keen to keep building the community. So you know, do get in touch with us, you could be added to the mailing list for future events. And obviously, join Mesh as well, because it's free, and you can post your own articles and join discussions. So there we go.

Gary Hickey  18:39

Thank you, Helen. And I can only concur that they were great sessions. They really were enjoyable, and really useful, so thank you. I've got a final question. I'm going to ask each of you. I'll start with Tasha. If you were giving advice to someone looking to work with community connectors to improve community engagement and involvement in their research, what three tips would you give them? 

Tasha Koch  19:05

So the first tip I would give is something that I think people should think about anyway when doing community engagement work, and not just when working with connectors, but even more so when working with connectors, and I'll explain why I think that. But I think the first thing is to really examine one's motivations for doing the work. And so I think the best community community engagement or public engagement work comes from people who really have an interest or a passion for the work and who are not sort of doing it out of obligation or because they've been put under pressure from their PI or research director or funder. And I think connectors are, to put it colloquially, are sort of sensitive souls. And I think that's because often connectors are people who have a lot of implicit experience and have this experience and are in the position that they are, because they, really many connectors are looking to improve outcomes for people that they're working with. And so often what I've seen is that a lot of connectors I've worked with, are really mistrustful of the system, especially when it's coming institutionally, and have been burnt many times and it takes a long time to build that trust. And so I think if one's motivations aren't there, or aren’t correct, connectors will often pick up on that, and it will make the relationship much more difficult to build. So that's my first suggestion. And then I think the second suggestion fits in really well to what Nabeel was saying about reflexivity and flexibility. And that's really to remain reflexive and flexible when working in the community engagement space, and particularly with connectors. As Nabeel said a lot of the work is informal within formal spaces. So sometimes it feels a bit mad or a bit disorganised, but often the outcome is very positive and impactful in that way of working. And then my third bit of advice is to, and it's something I'm trying to do a lot as well, especially with all the noise that's out there, is to try and actively listen. And often I found that speaking to people outside of my own field, there's almost a different language, a different jargon that gets spoken and saying one thing to one person can mean something else completely to someone else. So an example that I can give is, when I first started working with the artist, who is the co-director of Eh!woza, Ed, I would say research and because I'm a biomedical researcher, that very much for me means have a hypothesis, go and apply some methods to investigate that hypothesis, analyse the data and think about it in the context of work. Whereas for someone like an artist, research is much more exploratory and can be without hypothesis. And so it probably took two years for us to really understand what we meant when one of us said research. And so I think that's a really important component is, is to really listen to what people are saying and maybe just one last one, if I may, is the fourth one, a bonus, is give time for relationships to develop. So I really also liked what Nabeel said, and Helen, I thought that was a brilliant description of what our connectors work has tried to do. And I think relationships in this space and in general, through collaboration take a long time to develop. So, often people will want to see results or impact. But it's only after potentially a few months, even a year or even longer than that, that a really strong relationship and collaborative rapport develops. And so yeah, those are my three, four tips.

Gary Hickey  22:45

Thank you, Tasha. Thank you. Nabeel over to you. Three top tips.

Nabeel Petersen  22:50

Yes, so mine is going to sound really similar to Tasha, I think our work is aligned in the way we want to work with people in in sort of co-designing, using participation as our main sort of core value and everything that we work on. So I would say my point number one would be when working with connectors or wanting to work with connectors, establish a shared value and principle always, and one that is collaborative or participatory, shared between different parties, that would be sort of your guiding North when it comes to different problematic being presented within practice. And there are many instances in my own work where we never sort of spoke about this shared value system. And we just ended up always addressing problems, whereas the problems could have been addressed by the shared value system, which would have guided our solutions. So I think that is point number one, establish a shared set of principles and values. And I think also, like Tasha said, invest in people, invest in self and invest in mutual learning. And this will basically mean when it comes to establishing rapport, internal to institutions, externally with connectors as well, using time, effort, possible finances in to build relationships and meaningful relationships, not relationships to go to an end. And then maintaining some sort of active learning. And this is something that I just made up on the spot, but active learning, meaning we're learning together. So yes, we possibly do have predetermined goals for a project. But when working with people with very different opinions, very different lived experiences, often the projects we predesigned can't, can't live and breathe as we predetermined. Just the nature of people we all very different. So I think that's point number two, an investment in people's self and mutual learning. I think point number three, as Tasha mentioned, which was maintaining some sort of active flexibility and reflexivity. What are we doing when we come to different spaces as researchers because we do, we are shifting something that's existing already. So we do need to maintain an aspect  of flexibility or rather anticipate, anticipate the need to be flexible within projects, if we want it to be meaningful and not just tick boxing exercises. I think I'm probably going to go over three points. Just listening to everyone and getting really inspired. I think also often we use the language of everyone coming to the same table, you know when it comes to designing or approaching projects with different audiences of publics. But often the table has already been designed. So we're coming to a table that is, has been cemented or standing on top of a different power imbalance. So I think we need to look at designing the table with all parties rather than, hey, Nabeel come and sit over here, we need this project made. So I tend to force my practice into a predetermined timeline, which doesn't do anyone any good.

Gary Hickey  25:51

I like that analogy of the table. Because it's like I often talk about Nabeel is that we invite people into our world, don't we, with our formal ways, our agendas, our ways of doing things. And I quite like that. I'm going to steal that if you don't mind. 

Nabeel Petersen  26:05

That's okay, that's okay. I'll publish them so that you’re forced to reference me. And then I think maybe the last point, which isn't really a point at all, it's just that you can't do everything ourselves. So collaborations with connectors are really important. So just that acceptance that I can't do everything myself. There are people with very specific knowledge and skill set, understandings of different spaces, and it only strengthens practice and projects.

Gary Hickey  26:33

Thank you, Nabeel, Helen, over to you. Three key top tips.

Helen Latchem  26:39

Yeah. Well, I mean, I feel like it's a perfect segway on from Nabeel’s tip number three. Yeah, I'm thinking of this from the perspective of yeah, talking to a researcher who wants to do some engagement, is looking about where to start. Yeah, and my number one tip was, would be, you don't need to be superhuman. So you know, there's lots of work, there's, you know, there's a huge amount of work to do to run a research project. And I think it often seems so challenging to make that extra time for community engagement. Or you feel like you don't know where to start. And I think that's okay. And you know, being a researcher is your expertise. But you need to find the expertise that you need in community engagement and resource that time. So, you know, it's expertise, knowledge, experience, but also time, as I said previously, that researchers can't do everything, you know, but obviously, make sure that time is appropriately funded for those connectors that you work with. And so number two, don't try and reinvent the wheel. You know, do some research and other engagement projects in your, in your field in your research area to see what methods and approaches have been used already. And you can have a look in the Mesh resource library and find project reports and reflections in your topic area, you know, don't start from scratch, don't try to create a new space and bring communities to it, where, you know, where is your community already? What are they motivated to engage with currently? And this will help you find the right connector to work with as that starting point. And then number three. So one of the participants in our second workshop said, ‘connectors often find themselves working within hierarchies of knowledge’. So where certain world views are naturally given more power. So my advice is truly recognise and respect the expertise and skills and that professional experience your collaborator brings. I spent a decade advising researchers, I used to work at the Wellcome Trust on funding and managing international engagement programme and I spent a long time advising researchers and I suspect it seems obvious to us but I don't think it always is.  You know, filmmakers, animators, theatre companies, those kinds of people. They shouldn't just be there to communicate your ideas, you know, allow the creative process to happen. You know, you never know it might challenge your thinking or change your ideas about your own research.

Gary Hickey  28:58

Brilliant. Thank you. Well, thank you, Helen. Thank you, Tasha. Thank you, Nabeel for all three of you giving up your time. And it's been really good to chat to you. And there’s lots of interesting stuff there that I think people will really welcome. This was an episode of the National Institute for Health and Care Research’s podcast series Spotlight on community engagement and involvement: Improving global health research and outcomes through engaging with local communities. I’m Gary Hickey and thank you very much indeed for listening. If you have any thoughts or comments on this or any other episodes in our podcast series then please contact us via our twitter channel which is @NIHRResearch. For more information about the National Institute for Health and Care Research you can visit our website NIHR.ac.uk. Thank you very much.