It has long been accepted that scholarly research in the social sciences will often (and should) involve research participants as partners in the research process – both to deliver and co-design research and to generate new knowledge together with the researchers [1].
Thus, for setting up the Only Human project, we partnered with Community Research experts, Centric. The Centric team provided community input into the design and structure of our project and created a scoping strategy for us to follow.
“Centric Community Research is a Research Hub developed, owned, and operated by the communities of Lambeth and Southwark. Informed by a history of racism and discrimination against people of colour and our lived experience of racial inequities that we still face to this day, we aspire to empower diverse communities of colour across the urban landscape.”
Centric’s role in the Only Human project was to set us off on the right footing so that we could brief our first film makers on community perspectives of genetics. When writing the Research Ethics Committee approval paperwork, required by the University of Cambridge, we also had input from the social scientists from Centric on the most appropriate methods to recruit, consent, film, and analyse data from community audiences we wanted to show our films to.
As Only Human is underpinned by the visual interpretation of creative assets and has a strong message around inclusion – inclusion of missing voices, inclusion of interesting and different views about genetics. Through the partnership with Centric we have received endorsement (and indeed Research Ethics Committee approval from the University of Cambridge) to film and show members of the public offering their feedback on the films shown on this website. Once we have completed new community engagement research about each film, our website will become a platform for participants themselves to be included, be seen, and be heard, offering their own feedback. Thus the website itself becomes a home for films that inspire conversations about genetics, and films that show these conversations. This forms part of the benefit-sharing aspect of the research.
Over the last 20 years film has been used in social sciences research globally [2], both as research data and more recently as data for dissemination of research findings through participants’ perspectives [3]. This not only proffers the data for secondary analysis by other researchers, but also provides a springboard for new conversations about the project with new audiences. The film lives on as a method for continual reflection and imagination for new audiences who watch it. It has also been shown to generate and demonstrate new knowledge within communities who participate in being filmed [4]. For the research participants themselves, this opportunity to contribute towards enabling thought and reflection in others, is often a motivating factor for choosing to be filmed to start with [5]. ‘Being heard by others’, ‘having a platform’, ‘gaining visibility’ are all personally reaffirming reasons to participate [6],[7],[8]. This is a phenomenon well documented in audio-visual ethnography[9].
[1] Rosemary A. Barbera (2008) Relationships and the Research Process: Participatory Action Research and Social Work, Journal of Progressive Human Services, 19:2, 140-159,
[2] Claudia M. Mitchell & Marni Sommer (2016) Participatory visual methodologies in global public health, Global Public Health, 11:5-6, 521-527
[3] Michela Franceschelli & Adele Galipò (2021) The use of film documentary in social science research: audio-visual accounts of the ‘migration crisis’ from the Italian island of Lampedusa, Visual Studies, 36:1, 38-50
[4] Tremblay C., Jayme BDO. (2015). Community knowledge co-creation through participatory video. Action Research, 13, 298–314
[5] Yang K. H. (2015). Voice, authenticity and ethical challenges: The participatory dissemination of youth-generated visual data over social media. Visual Studies, 30, 309–318
[6] Budig, K., et al. Photovoice and empowerment: evaluating the transformative potential of a participatory action research project. BMC Public Health 18, 432 (2018)
[7] Zoettl P. A. (2013). Images of culture: Participatory video, identity and empowerment. International Journal of Cultural Studies, 16, 209–224
[8] Mandy Hughes (2021) Filmmaking as empirical research: working with people from refugee backgrounds to share stories about food, Visual Studies, 36:1, 11-24,
[9] Klaue, Léa, and Martin Zimper. 2020. Research Video: Audiovisual Ethnography and beyond. Dearq (26): 28-35