Making Connections: An event made for and with young people in research

Lowenna is a member of our Young People’s Advisory Group. She was one of the organisers of Making Connections, a national event in Birmingham for young people involved in research. We asked her about the experience of organising such a large and important event.

What was the event and what were its aims?

Making Connections was a national event held in Birmingham on 1 February. Sixty young people from all over the UK attended, representing a range of youth involvement groups.

In the spirit of getting young people involved, the event was co-designed by a youth panel, which I was a member of, and organised by Jenny Preston and Sammy Ainsworth from the NIHR Alder Hey Clinical Research Facility and coordinators of GenerationR Alliance.

We hoped to design an itinerary full of engaging talks and activities which would appeal to the wide range of age groups attending on the day. The event was an opportunity to make friends, celebrate achievements, learn about new organisations and feel inspired to continue their research involvement. But on top of this, we also really wanted something more widespread to come out of Making Connections.

Young peoples’ voices are being heard in research more than ever before, but there’s always room for improvement. We used this event as an opportunity to ask attendees how they felt about being involved in research, what worked well and what could be improved. We hope that this data will improve the experience of young people involved in research.

What was your role in the event?

As a member of the youth panel, I attended regular Zoom meetings during the six months leading up to the event. We worked together to plan all elements of the day. This included the itinerary, guest speakers and small group activities. As a panel, we voiced our preferences for having lots of short sessions and breaking up the talks with creative activities to help everyone stay focused. We also got to suggest organisations we wanted to invite and, most importantly, voted on different lunch menus.

After the planning process, we travelled to Birmingham for the event and help facilitate. We opened the day by introducing ourselves, the groups represented by all the young people who attended, the people giving talks and the organisations represented through stalls at the back of the room.

To help run the small-group activities, we were each allocated a table for the day. On our tables, we worked with one adult and several young people to produce visual presentations of how we feel about being involved in research. Finally, at the end of the day we got back up to the front and closed the event, acknowledging everyone who helped Making Connections happen, including the attendees who travelled from all over the UK.

What happens next?

All attendees (both adults and young people) were given a chance to express how they feel researchers could do better to involve young people. This information has been collected in a range of creative formats. For example, we worked together to draw the outline of a person (a researcher) and inside this outline wrote what we wanted our ‘perfect researcher’ to be thinking, feeling and doing while working with us as young people. This ‘design the perfect researcher’ task was suggested by one of the members of the youth panel and has – along with other activities – created lots of data which can be used to improve the experiences of young people involved in research.

There’s a team of adults involved in Making Connections who are working hard to get this information out to the people who can use it to make a difference. It’s also really important that young people can access these results. Therefore, in a follow up meeting after the event, it was suggested that the youth panel could help write a version of the data which everyone will be able to understand. This shows how young people have been, and will continue to be, involved at every stage of Making Connections.

What did you get out of it from a personal perspective?

As a member of the youth panel, I gained invaluable experience in event planning which I will be able to carry forward into the rest of my life as well as getting to hear from all the amazing guest speakers on the day.

I know I benefited from meeting up with people in real life, not just on Zoom or Teams. I met so many new people, and as for anyone I already knew, we’d only ever met online.

My favourite part of the day was listening to organisations, such as RAiISE and Barnardo’s, talk about the impact of youth involvement. It was inspiring to hear from people who have transitioned from being young people with lived experience (where I am now) to adults using their experiences to lead advocacy and research (where I hope to be in the future).

I personally feel that this event was a huge success and, having spoken to the other people involved in planning and facilitating, it seems we are all in agreement. As the first national event of its kind in 12 years, it was an extremely exciting day to be a part of. It makes me feel so empowered to see this level of investment into enabling young peoples’ voices to be heard and I can’t wait to watch the impact of Making Connections unfold.