UCL Visible CoSpace: A study of space and health

To prepare the materials for our upcoming project, the UCL Visible Co-Space research team invited Camden Youth Councillors to UCL to share their ideas and to engage with other UCL academics. In working with young people, it only made sense to get young people’s views on our project aims, materials, and recruitment details – what a great idea it was! 

After some introductions from everyone, including fun facts, Keri and Lusi shared the project aim of the Visible CoSpace project, why we’re doing it, and our hypothesis. With the brief on hand, the youth councillors submitted feedback and ideas anonymously on a few topics: 

What do you think of when you hear ‘UCL’? 

What can UCL researchers do to make it easier for young people to take part in our project? 

What challenges might we face? 

If you were helping us, how would you convince other young people to take part in a project like ours? 

What would you like to get out of taking part in a project? 

How might you share what we find with the public, policymakers, and other researchers? 

Following this, the youth councillors completed the survey as if they were participants in our study. While reading the questions, they gave anonymous feedback about what they noticed, suggestions they had, how to make it more accessible to young people in general, formatting, and more. The youth councillors took everything from wording to colours used and fonts into consideration when reviewing our study materials, and the feedback was incredibly insightful. With their help, we were able to create an introduction video and study flyer to make our project more accessible and participant-friendly! 

After all their diligent work, everybody had the opportunity to connect and network with others in the room over pizza and juice. In particular, we invited UCL academics from disciplines that youth councillors were curious to learn more about (e.g., politics, data science, medicine) to the room to share their career journey and answer any questions they might have. The conversation topics were endless: from social media consumption and addiction to general health to attending UCL to outside hobbies and interests to the Visible CoSpace project.

The young people later told us that this experience was interesting and gave them an opportunity to learn more about “uni life” at UCL. They found it to be interesting, niche, and chill to connect with the other councillors and the UCL team! This was such a lovely and beneficial experience for both the councillors and the UCL team, as it is always nice to gain the perspective of anyone you might meet!