Tiny Worlds and Big Conversations: E-Co-Flourishing Goes to Westgate

By: Jessica Smits & Ella Jenkins

On the 29th of May, as part of the E-Co-flourishing Project, we got the opportunity to run a stall in the Westgate shopping centre with a few of our incredible YPAG leaders and researchers, to present to the public what research is taking place within the project. Public engagement events such as this are an excellent way to raise awareness of the research being undertaken, which in turn can help us make changes to the way systems are run and how environments are treated. For the E-Co-Flourishing project we aim to raise awareness of the positive impact green and blue spaces have on mental health and if the public is aware of these benefits, potential proposals are more likely to be passed that will positively impact everyone. 

While mainly explaining to adults what the project was predominantly about, we were also running activities to further involve people; the most interested individuals were children. A good sign for our future. The most popular activity involved the use of handheld microscopes to observe the miniature worlds within everyday objects. Everyone was pleasantly surprised by the amount of detail that can be found in places you wouldn’t ordinarily think to look! Though we also utilised body maps so participants could draw where they felt emotions in their body while in nature. We came away having had a series of enlightening conversations with the general public interested in our stall, and a wonderful array of colourful images too! Personally, we feel that our stall did well to capture the attention of those passing by, whether that was the microscopes, colourful drawings, or the passion the researchers had while chatting to interested individuals. 

Next time though, we might reconsider a few things about our stall, such as bringing sand bags to weigh down our banner. The weather was not the mildest, and we wouldn’t want to knock anyone over. We might also consider having some bowls of sweets as we saw on multiple other stalls that nothing quite attracts attention as a sweet treat. As the majority of interest was from children, we might also brainstorm ways in which we could make the stall more attractive to adults.

There was a wonderful sense of community as all the other stalls around us were also presenting their research and we went to talk to some, such as Welfare Economics. This taught us a lot about how much goes on within physical and mental health research, even going to the extent of research around the funding of health services. And we hope that the wonderful people who interacted with our stall had a similar learning experience. In all, it was a highly fun and informative event to have the opportunity to be a part of, and see the culmination of this project’s amazing research.