Representation and knowledge exchange: A scoping review of photovoice and disability

Long-held misperceptions around disability continue to cause discrimination, stigmatization and harm. Effective, impactful research can challenge and change the status quo and influence decision-making. This scoping review seeks to understand how one arts-based research method, photovoice, interrogates issues in disability research. This article maps the current field of enquiry developing around disability photovoice research and examines two variables: representation and knowledge exchange. Thirty identified articles converged on the relevance to people with disability of community, accessibility, attitudinal change, adaption, economic empowerment and identity. Disseminating new knowledge generated through photovoice to a broader audience can have impact, especially on physical and attitudinal barriers. However, impact is rarely addressed in photovoice research. With its growing application in the disability field, photovoice research should monitor its influence on community and the environment to determine its benefit beyond the research setting

Self-Portraits for Social Change: Audience Response to a Photovoice Exhibition by Women with Disability

Negative attitudes about and behaviours towards women with disability are harmful and exclusionary, contributing to poorer health, income, educational, and employment outcomes. Our study focused on what audiences learnt, felt, and did (what changed) after viewing self-portraits and stories by women with disability. We questioned whether a public exhibition of their artworks, created through photovoice methodology, could be an effective platform to provoke social change and increase inclusion for people with disability. We collected audience response to our exhibition to address a research gap and to provide an example for other photovoice researchers. We employed interpretive thematic analysis through a generic social processes framework to interrogate responses. Our findings indicate that audiences learnt as much about themselves and their views of disability as they did about the women photographers. The audience described feelings of empathic engagement. They also expressed an unsettling between previously held assumptions around disability and new perspectives gained through the exhibition. Audiences changed how they view women with disability by engaging with the underlying messages of equality in the self-portraits and stories. Audiences thought the exhibition would change other people’s views, too, indicating a pathway to greater inclusion for people with disability

Learning from the implementation of Universal Free School Meals in Scotland using Normalisation Process Theory:Lessons for policymakers to engage multiple stakeholders

In 2014/15, Universal Free School Meals (UFSM) were introduced in Scotland and England for children in their first three years of primary school. This study examined the implementation of UFSM in Scotland using Noramlisation Process Theory (NPT), a middle-range theory of implementation, to identify areas of learning for policymakers wishing to introduce or extend similar policies. NPT is predominantly used to evaluate interventions or new technologies in healthcare settings. Qualitative data were collected across Scotland using a case study approach shortly after implementation (n = 29 school-level stakeholders) and in the following school year (n = 18 school-level stakeholders and n = 19 local authority-level stakeholders). Observations of lunchtime in each school were conducted at both timepoints. Data were analysed using a thematic framework approach using NPT constructs and sub-constructs. Results suggested education and catering stakeholders experiences of implementation diverged most around the NPT concepts of coherence, cognitive participation, and reflexive monitoring. Lack of coherence around the purpose and long-term benefits of UFSM appeared to reduce education stakeholders’ willingness to engage with the policy beyond operational issues. In contrast, catering stakeholders identified a direct benefit to their everyday work and described receiving additional resources to deliver the policy. Overall, participants described an absence of monitoring data around the areas of greatest salience for education stakeholders. This study successfully used NPT to identify policy learning around school meals. Policymakers must increase the salience of such intersectoral policies for all relevant stakeholders involved before policy implementation, and plan adequate monitoring to evaluate potential long-term benefits

From liability to opportunity: An institutional approach towards value-based land remediation

© The Author(s) 2016. The remediation of contaminated sites impacts on stakeholders in potentially beneficial ways, yet stakeholder dialogue has historically been focussed on costs, risk, liability, stigma, and other negatives. Shedding light on stakeholders’ remediation values can help reform remediation policy towards more positive outcomes of site clean-up. We adopt institutional theory to elicit plural motivations and cognitive assumptions as embedded in stakeholders’ expressions of remediation values, objectives, and outcomes. We explore in four case studies with varying size, complexity, cultural diversity, and geographical location (three in Australia, one in Fiji) how remediation values operate within remediation decisions. Our findings suggest that more than economic costs, liability, and risks are at play in decision-making on contaminated land. Our research confirmed that different socio-ethical, environmental and sustainability values are evaluated differently by different types of actors (site owners, regulators, auditors, residents, local government, consultants). We found that remediation values often shift in the course of a remediation decision-making process, suggesting learning and improved understanding. Remediation policy that better facilitates and aligns stakeholders’ articulations of initial and emergent outcomes sought from site clean-up is likely to enhance both economic and social value outcomes of remediation. Further research is needed on how remediation policy could better incorporate remediation value dynamics in stakeholder consultation and engagement

Understanding Protective Factors for Men at Risk of Suicide Using the CHIME Framework: The Primacy of Relational Connectedness

Suicide is a global problem, ranking among the leading causes of death in many countries across the world. Most people who die by suicide are “under the radar”, having never seen a mental health professional or been diagnosed with a mental illness. This article describes the protective factors for men experiencing suicidal thoughts, plans, and/or attempts who are “under the radar”. Using in-depth qualitative interviews, we aimed to understand stakeholder perspectives on the protective factors that influence men’s wellbeing. The pervasiveness of relational connectedness in men’s narratives was identified as a central protective factor. Other key protective factors included meaningful activity, empowerment, and hope. These results have the potential to facilitate the development of focused community initiatives. More generally, the current research offers an example of a qualitative inquiry into men’s wellbeing that focuses on strengths and positive factors in their lives and may provide a guide for future community-based suicide prevention research

Body Mapping in a Drug and Alcohol Treatment Program: Eliciting New Identity and Experience

Arts-based approaches have not been widely used in the drug and alcohol treatment sector. In this study, we examined the utility of the arts-based method of Body Mapping in an Australian residential treatment centre. Two workshops were held to explore young people's strengths and support networks in order to improve understandings of young people's lives, identities and experiences of treatment. Semi-structured follow-up interviews were conducted and triangulated with observational notes and staff interviews. We identified four major themes: engaging through art; removing the mask; revealing strengths; and a sense of achievement. Overall, this study highlighted the value of Body Mapping as an approach to engage with young people, providing rich in-depth data about their lived experiences, including in the alcohol and other drug (AOD) treatment context

A New Normal: Integrating Lived Experience Into Scientific Data Syntheses

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What this collaboration between artists and health-care leaders teaches us about living through COVID-19

A new project that spotlights the strain from COVID-19 on our health systems and the people who work in them has invited health-care leaders and artists to create artworks that illuminate what it has been like leading, working and living through the pandemic

Challenging Perceptions of Disability through Performance Poetry Methods: The "Seen but Seldom Heard" Project.

This paper considers performance poetry as a method to explore lived experiences of disability. We discuss how poetic inquiry used within a participatory arts-based research framework can enable young people to collectively question society’s attitudes and actions towards disability. Poetry will be considered as a means to develop a more accessible and effective arena in which young people with direct experience of disability can be empowered to develop new skills that enable them to tell their own stories. Discussion of how this can challenge audiences to critically reflect upon their own perceptions of disability will also be developed