Research
About the Purple Research Group
We are Charlie, Ella, Leanne, Liam, Janine, Jo, John, Sam and Tracey and we are a team of researchers who all go to and/or support someone who attends the Purple Patch Lifelong Learning Programmes. We work with a researcher from the University of Leeds, called Melissa – together we are the Purple Research Group.
Our vision is that learning-disabled people are involved in all research.
What is Research?
‘Research’ can mean a lot of different things – for us, research is about trying to answer a question that you do not know the answer to. Lots of people use research: scientists trying to create new medicines, academics wanting to find out why things happen, organisations asking participants their thoughts and opinions, even chocolate makers asking people what their next creation should be!
We believe that anyone can be a researcher if they want to be. We know that learning-disabled adults can make great researchers and we want to make sure that other learning-disabled people can share their experience and expertise.
Research Projects
Click on a dropdown below for information about our research projects.
A Purple PhD
We started doing research in August 2020 as part of Melissa’s PhD. We spent 3 years learning all about research and worked together to find out what people think about Purple Patch Arts. We also thought about exciting ways we can share our experiences at Purple Patch Arts with other people.
Our research themes were : “People”, “Arts and Variety” and “Accessibility and Support”. We used these themes to help us to understand our experiences at Purple Patch Arts.
We met every two weeks over Zoom to do our research from August 2020 – September 2021. For each theme, we read about research other people had done and chose our research questions. We collected our evidence using creative, inclusive and interactive research methods: we created posters and artistic responses, designed questionnaires, took photographs, wrote poems, kept a research diary and did interviews.
Finally, we analysed our data to see what we had found out. Melissa completed the PhD in 2023 and the Purple PhD thesis is available to read online here.
If you would like to read more about how we worked together to do our research, you can read our blog here.
Making Research Accessible
Earlier this year, we were thrilled to receive funding from the Young Foundation’s Community Knowledge Fund for an exciting project that aims to break down barriers for learning-disabled people to be meaningfully involved in research.
During the project, we learned about different types of research and identified what might stop learning-disabled people from being involved. We then came up with a list of recommendations about how research can be made accessible.
Our ‘River of Research’ below shows the findings from the project:
Cick below to hear the Purple Research Group talking through our ‘River of Research’ findings;
The Purple Patch - A Research Comic
We are very excited to present our research as a comic book: ‘The Purple Patch’! You can read it below and find out more here.
The creation of our comic book was generously funded by the Society for Education, Music and Psychology Research (SEMPRE)
The Purple Patch is illustrated by Molly Pukes.
Impact
As we have worked together to learn about research, make new discoveries, and advocate for learning-disabled people being involved in all aspects of research, we have recognised the impact being a part of the Purple Research Group has had on us:
![An image with purple and teal clouds above orange and pink trees. In each cloud there is a quote. The quotes are:<br />
"I want to prove people wrong […] everybody thinks I can’t do it. I learned how to do the research. I want to show them how I can do research"<br />
“We’ve gained new friendships along the way”<br />
"There is new things you are good at, and one of them, for all of us today, is research”<br />
“It’s given me confidence to go on and do a two and a half year more research programme, which I don’t think I might have had the confidence to have done"<br />
“I learned skills I didn’t know I had”<br />
“we’ve all led on it [the research] as equals”<br />
"I didn’t like new people or new things, but by the middle of being a researcher I changed"<br />
“I've realised it was a bit bigger world than me. I didn't expect that I could talk to people at the university. Other groups are listening!”](https://purplepatcharts.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Brandon-Grotesque-Medium-400-x-200-mm.png "Brandon Grotesque Medium (400 x 200 mm)")
What’s Next?
We want to do more research and pass on what we’ve learned. We’re looking for funding to be able to create training and information to help people to do accessible and inclusive research.
We also want to grow our network. If you’re interested in getting involved, please get in touch!
Contact
If you have any questions about the research you can contact Melissa or Fran. We would love to hear from you!
Melissa, Community Research Manager
Email: research@purplepatcharts.org
Fran, Chief Executive Officer
Email: fran@purplepatcharts.org
