Research

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;

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.

We were invited to be a case study to test the Culture, Health and Wellbeing Alliance (CHWA)’s Creative Health Quality Framework, to explore how accessible it was for learning-disabled people. We put on lots of different hats for this project (quite literally, we played a game of musical hats!) to consider the framework both as researchers and as Purple Patch participants.

We approached the different parts of the framework separately, to help us test how they all worked together: first we looked only at the images used in the framework, then the titles of each principle, and finally the definitions of each principle. We shared our understanding of each principle, and reflected on how they applied to our work as researchers, and our experiences at Purple Patch. We also came up with our own definitions for each principle within the framework, which were more grounded in our real-life experiences.

We loved helping CHWA to assess their Creative Health Quality Framework, and the project really aligned with our vision that learning-disabled people be involved in all stages of research. In order for this to happen, new research and evaluation tools need to be accessible to learning-disabled people!

Lizzie, who created our case study, told us she would take away the following from working with us:

“One thing I will be taking away from this experience is the power of collaboration in developing a shared understanding. Watching the PRG members work together to define the principles in a way that felt true to their experiences was incredibly impactful. It reminded me that co-creation isn’t just about working together but about allowing space for different voices and interpretations.”

You can read more about the Creative Health Quality Framework here.

We are so excited to continue our work with Dr Melissa Kirby and Dr Amy Russell at the University of Leeds, to create resources which will support researchers to involve learning-disabled people in meaningful ways in their research.

Our project will focus on the practicalities of co-production, by developing and testing guidance to support researchers to be aware of the planning, resources and creative activities needed for true participatory research, which is also enjoyable and meaningful for learning-disabled people!

We will also be creating a glossary that explains research terms in an accessible way, to ensure that everyone has a shared understanding of research. This project will build on our River of Research, and bring us one step closer to our vision of learning-disabled people being involved in all research!