Public Involvement

We will bridge the gap between the public and decision-makers in urban planning. One of the main ways we will do this is by developing creative initiatives in partnership with the public, which will be designed to share their experiences of living in urban environments.

This work aims to not only improve decision-makers’ understanding of the impacts of urban settings on health and health inequalities, but to persuade them of the positive role they can play in improving health outcomes. Our intention is to influence their behaviour and ensure that the health of urban communities is prioritised in future planning.

We will also be working to make sure that the voice of the public is heard throughout the TRUUD programme through ‘public involvement’, which we define as working with the public to design and carry out our research.

The team will co-design creative outputs with representatives of decision-makers and local communities. We will follow principles of good public involvement practice in this work. Two community-based organisations, Live Well, Make Art (LWMA) in Manchester and Knowle West Media Centre (KWMC) in Bristol will also be closely involved in these activities. At the moment we are working with these organisations to identify community representatives to work with us as advisors (see Public Contributors below).

Creative initiatives will be developed which convey how residents experience the urban environment, its impact on their health, and their aspirations for change. The initiatives will be tested with groups of decision-makers and assessed for their impact on planning activities.

A wider remit is to make sure that there is strong public involvement throughout the TRUUD programme so that:

• the programme is relevant to the concerns of the general public, particularly communities most affected by health inequalities.

• a strong partnership is built with communities for the design and development of programme interventions.
• programme information and outputs are in a format and language which can be accessed and understood by all.

To involve the public in all elements of the TRUUD programme we are recruiting and working closely with a team of members of the public (‘public contributors’) who will form a Lay Public Advisory Group. This Group will provide input and guidance not only to all of WP4’s activities but all other TRUUD Work Packages, as required. Two lead members of the Lay Public Advisory Group will sit on the TRUUD External Advisory Board.

A set of creative initiatives which will be tested and refined. These will form a model or template which is transferrable to different planning contexts.

See our page Living in Unhealthy Places for a series of films demonstrating the lived experience of unhealthy environments such as damp, noise, pollution and overcrowding.

See our briefing notes Making-meaningful-public-engagement-with-digital-tools.pdf and Using-lay-knowledge-1.pdf for progress on the resulting public engagement intervention.