A series of short, reflective pieces about widening participation projects is being published from within the Fair Access Research (FAR) initiative, which aim to share ideas and experiences on widening participation projects from across the university, to provoke thought and to inspire.

Think Piece One is written by Dr Jacqueline Priego, postdoctoral research fellow in CEL, about a co-production project with BU student carers.

FAR Think Piece One:  All of us put other people first

In this project, BU Students who also have caring responsibilities for others collaborated with BU researchers in the co-production of data collection, analysis and dissemination. The students were given cameras and asked to take a picture each day for a month. Their goal was to capture scenes that would help understand their experiences as students and carers at BU and how caring impacted on their learning experiences. They were given the freedom to portray anything they felt was relevant to the project. In addition to this, the students met with the research team for one-to-one interviews, helping the team to better understand how caring and studying interplay in students’ lives.

The final collaboration between students and researchers came through participatory analysis and an exhibition. Photographs displayed were selected from a pool of over 300 images produced by the students and captions came from their interviews. The students were given final say over which images and words were used to reflect their experiences.

Further information on this project is on the BU Research blog post Students who Bounce Back

Part of the ‘Ways of Working’ theme. One of five themes in the Fair Access Research project