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Visit the Future of Our Seas Blog (archive)

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Visit the Future of Our Seas Blog (archive)

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Visit the Lived Experience webpage

Read the project engagement and impact report

Read the project journal paper

Watch this miniseries on Living on the Frontlines of Climate Change

A migrant's story

A rickshaw wallah's story

A mother’s story

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Visit the Moorfields Biomedical Research Centre resource page

Read their UCL case study

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The Undersea Choir was part of the Future of Our Seas project. Read more about how these researchers developed their audience and project and collaborated with artists to bring this programme to life.

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Postcard template_RG_Eating for Eye Health

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The Lived Experience of Climate Change. Documentary (with English subtitles)

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“Eating for Eye Health” is a public engagement project initiated by research students and clinicians at UCL Institute of Ophthalmology and Moorfields Eye Hospital to raise awareness about nutrition and eye health, particularly for the older generation. 

There is evidence that good nutrition can benefit eye health. 

Through this project, we aim to explore simple ways of improving nutrition for the older generation, especially involving people who have received a diagnosis of "dry" age-related macular degeneration (AMD) for which there is currently no treatment.

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To demonstrate the impact noise pollution can have in ocean habitats, Dr Harry Harding developed an interactive undersea choir for local festival, the Plymouth Pirates Weekend.

The project postcard highlights how the project developed.

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Using fun, interactive sessions, Dr Rosie Gilbert and her team shared a cookery class with older adults experiencing macular degeneration by sharing a meal -- and research-driven advice about the role of healthy eating for eye health.

Read more about this project in the postcard below.

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This project carried a serious message, rooted in research, about sustaining healthy eyes via healthy eating. But it was also delivered with a sense of fun in the way it engaged with patients using cookery classes.
Eating for Eye Health is a project which highlights the potential benefits that may be associated with eating food high in anti-oxidants to protect the retina from the eye condition, dry age-related macular degeneration.

Led by Dr Rosie Gilbert, it engaged a group of older patients in a cookery session which highlighted the potentially positive benefits of eating foods rich in anti-oxidants. The ingredients included colourful foods such as butternut squash, kale, yellow and orange peppers, and broccoli.

Patients also enjoyed the experience of cooking together and sharing their experiences, with many patients facing the prospect of having no medical treatment options available to them.

Project partners

The project was led by Dr Rosie Gilbert, a clinical research fellow and PhD student at University College London (UCL).

It was delivered with the help of a grant via UCL's Public and Cultural Engagement team.

It was further supported by NIHR Biomedical Research Centre at Moorfields Eye Hospital NHS Foundation Trust

It was delivered with the help of a Community Kitchen at Manor Gardens Community Centre in Islington.

Further support came via a clinical and research nutritionist, Susana Irving, from the University of Porto, Portugal.

Purpose

The project aimed to:

Raise awareness of research that suggests nutrition may help protect against the progression of AMD, a common cause of blindness in older people

Encourage older people to cook and eat food that could support eye health.

Engage participants in the enjoyment of cooking together and eating anti-oxidant rich foods which might benefit eye health, all carried out in a local, community and sociable environment.

Research cooking preference/skills

Strengthen the relationship between the local community and UCL

Background

Dry age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is believed to affect more than 600,000 people in the UK alone. It progressively damages the central vision and is one of the leading causes of untreatable blindness.

As there are very limited treatment options upon diagnosis for sufferers of dry age-related macular degeneration (AMD), patients are often discharged and while there is some support in the community, they can often feel isolated.

Current scientific evidence, in particular the AREDS Clinical Trials, sponsored by the United States National Eye Institute, supports the recommendation of including extra vitamin and minerals into the diet as a strategy to tackle disease progression.

Although these can be achieved with specific antioxidant supplements, we also know that these key nutrients can be found in brightly coloured foods, which may be enriched in the diet.

Approach

The project initially engaged members of the public in a focus group organised with the help of the Macular Society (patient charity), together with Moorfields NIHR's mailing lists together with verbal invitations to patients as they visited the eye clinics.

Following the focus group, and based on recommendations made then, a community cookery day was held when around 10 patients spent time with clinicians who raised awareness about how diet and nutrition influence health. Patients were also shown how to prepare food to optimise the absorption of nutrients.

Participants in turn shared their views on how their eye problems have impacted their lifestyle, their thoughts on the changing trends in diet and nutrition and what they perceived as barriers to changing their lifestyles.

They told the project team about their interest in participating in a community kitchen project and filled out a short questionnaire about their diet.

At the community cookery day, the public participated in a 'Food Bingo' activity, followed by the main activity of cooking a three course meal, including a food tasting of so-called 'superfoods', before eating the meal together.

Evaluation

There was a positive response from participants of the focus group in terms of acquiring new knowledge from the talks and willingness to participate in a further cookery day activity.

All the participants said they enjoyed the healthy meal they cooked together as part of the community kitchen activity and the majority of the participants claimed to feel more confident about their own confidence in cooking after the activity.

The evaluation responses received on paper and photographs taken at the Cookery Day are evidence that the participants derived value from the project.

Video footage was captured and includes interviews with participants talking about the need for the project and their participation in cooking activities.

Positive feedback emails were also received, in addition to a patient letter in response to an article in the Macular Society's 'Sideview' Magazine Spring 2016 edition about the project.

Lessons learned

The project uncovered an unfulfilled need amongst patients to engage with clinicians and each other about nutrition for eye disease.

The UCL PhD research students from the Institute of Ophthalmology, who are doing basic research on eye disease, found the opportunity to interact with patients who had eye disease to be valuable because it added a personal perspective to their work and helped them to see that their research could make a tangible impact on people.

The project also showed the importance of engaging with the public as a way to inform and develop further research in this area.

The most successful 'marketing' method was through the PPI/E team at the Moorfields NIHR BRC because they are committed to supporting the best patient care at Moorfields Eye Hospital and they have well established infrastructure for patient engagement, including mailing lists of patients who have registered their interest in involvement in research.

This project has demonstrated the value of engagement with research on diseases where there are limited treatment options available to patients, and that engagement with a community activity, in itself, can be of value to participants.

Legacy

The positive experiences of the project participants, the media (photographs, video clip and magazine articles) and accompanying webpage on the Moorfields NIHR BRC website all support a potentially self-sustaining project community, going forward.

The project has already encouraged other researchers at UCL to take part in public engagement, and Dr Gilbert, project lead, has been invited to become a member of the newly formed Public Engagement Committee to co-ordinate these activities at the Institute of Ophthalmology.

The project team hopes other clinicians will be inspired to take innovative approaches with PPI/E, which could perhaps help meet the needs of their patients outside of the clinic.

The website is currently being further developed to include a cookery day summary, more recipes and project updates.

A similar project is being planned for later in the year. Meanwhile, other community kitchens have replicated some of the recipes and sessions.

Contact

For further information, please visit the project website or listen to our interview with the project team.

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This project carried a serious message, rooted in research, about sustaining healthy eyes via healthy eating. But it was also delivered with a sense of fun in the way it engaged with patients using cookery classes.

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Using traditional theatre for big, local impact

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Using traditional theatre for big, local impact

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The people living in the slums of Dhaka are some of the world's most at-risk to the effects of climate change. Dr Joanne Jordan created a traditional Pot Gan performance with local university students to share her research on the everyday effects of climate change.

Read the following project postcard to learn more about the people involved in this project, the Pot Gan approach and how the project went.

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We are, perhaps, all-too-familiar with the economic and political challenges that climate change poses. But by following people living in the slums of Dhaka in Bangladesh for several months, Dr Joanne Jordan dug deeper into how they responded to its effects, and what this might tell us about wider issues such as equality, culture and gender.

Dhaka in Bangladesh is on the front line of climate change. Dr Jordan, from Manchester University's Global Develoment Institute, spent several months talking to over 600 people in their homes, workplaces, teashops and on street corners to understand how climate change is linked to many other problems experienced in their 'everyday' life.

Her findings are explored in collaboration with the University of Dhaka through a 'Pot Gan'; a traditional folk performance, featuring melody, drama, pictures and dancing, which encouraged slum dwellers, researchers, practitioners and policymakers to reflect on the day to day realities of living with climate change.

This mini-documentary is a helpful guide to the whole project:

Project partners

Dr Joanne Jordan - Lecturer in Climate Change and Development, the Global development Institute, Univerity of Manchester

Mr Ahsan Khan - Lecturer in Performance Theatre, Department of Theatre and Performance Studies, University of Dhaka

MA students in Theatre, Department of Theatre and Performance Studies, University of Dhaka (around 19 of them)

Green Ink Productions, makers of the mini-documentary

Aims

This project aimed to examine the everyday realities and impact of climate change on the lives of slum dwellers, specifically in Dhaka, Bangladesh, and to communicate the findings to a diverse audience in an innovative manner that's accessible, engaging, and challenges pre-existing notions.

Background

Climate change is one of the biggest environmental and development challenges of the 21st century, and Bangladesh is one of the most vulnerable countries to global climate change.

The research centres on the day-to-day impact of climate change on the lives of slum dwellers in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

Around 60% of Bangladesh's urban population live in slum areas. Those living in slums bear the brunt of the effects of flooding because of the pooly-located housing, a lack of government investment and rhe fact that they tend to live in low lying areas prone to floods.

Approach

Climate experts suggest that a resilient community can better withstand disturbances, self-organise and learn and adapt to change when required.

While the poor show significant capacity to develop strategies to improve their resilience to climate stress, it has also been suggested that such strategies can be influenced by lack of formal land tenure rights as insecure land tenure can affect incentives for people to invest scarce resources in risk reduction.

This study uses a mixed method approach to examine how land tenure influences climate change impacts and how land tenure can influence strategies for enhancing resilience to climate change.

The findings were presented in the form of an indigenous drama know as a 'Pot Gan'. It was developed as part of a Master's course unit on 'Theatre for Development' at the University of Dhaka, helping Bangladeshi students learn about crucial global issues that have a local impact.

Three live Pot Gan performances in Dhaka were attended by over 600 people in Dhaka in April 2016, including: slum dwellers; policy makers; practitioners; academics; and the general public.

Evaluation

An online questionnaire has been central to gathering feedback from the viewers of the Pot Gan. This has so far been conducted for those who viewed the live performance of the Pot Gan and is being expanded to those who view the online documentary.

In a survey of the varied audiences who saw the live Pot Gan performance, 100% who responded agreed that performances like the Pot Gan are a useful way to build awareness on climate change. More than 80% said they had learned something new about climate change as a result of viewing the Pot Gan.

Lessons learned

The project has highlighted the importance of working across different disciplines in order to engage with the public.

It has taught the project team that it is not only important to build awareness on climate change and poverty through research, but to move beyond that and encourage people to discuss the research findings in new and innovative ways.

It also highlights the importance of using theatre performance as a tool to gather post-research feedback from research participants.

Legacy

The Pot Gan performance in its live form and within the documentary will be the most tangible legacy of the project. More than 100,000 people have viewed the project documentary online since it was released in September 2016.

Other highlights include:

Winner of The University of Manchester Making a Difference Awards 2017 for outstanding public engagement initiative (Out of over 130 applications)

Accompanied by high-profile events, such as a public event on 'The Lived Experience of Climate Change' at Rich Mix London, attended by 200 people (2 February 2017) and the premiere of the project documentary as part of Manchester Museum's Climate Control exhibition (24 August 2016), attended by a capacity audience of 100 people.

The project materials have been used as teaching resources at the University of Manchester

Coverage by Bangladesh Press: Climate change research based on Dhaka slum featured in 'Pot Gan' and documentary

Established new partnerships with organisations based in Bangladesh and the UK, including: University of Dhaka; Brick Lane Circle; Theatre of Debate; Tie-Dye Drama; Manchester Museum; Green Ink; Regent's High School; Rich Mix; and the British Council Bangladesh.

Contact

For further information, please see the University of Manchester webpages.

Email: joanne.jordan@manchester.ac.uk

Twitter: @JoanneCJordan #GDIpotgan

Facebook: www.facebook.com/GDIpotgan

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We are, perhaps, all-too-familiar with the economic and political challenges that climate change poses. But by following people living in the slums of Dhaka in Bangladesh for several months, Dr Joanne Jordan dug deeper into how they responded to its effects, and what this might tell us about wider issues such as equality, culture and gender.