To celebrate the centenary of the discovery of insulin, researchers at the Cardiff Diabetes Research Group developed a public engagement project featuring a creative website, an engaging video and an online event. Here, the Group shares how they planned these activities and what they learnt in the process.
Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease caused by the immune cells (T cells) destroying the insulin-producing beta cells in the pancreas, resulting in insufficient insulin secretion to meet the body’s needs; thus insulin has to be injected multiple times each and every day.
2021 was a special year marking the centenary since the discovery of insulin, a life-saving drug, co-discovered by Frederick Banting and James Macleod, with essential help from Charles Best and James Collip, which in 1923 led to Banting and Macleod being awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
What diabetes means to us
To commemorate the centenary, we (Cardiff Diabetes Research Group) organised a creative art project entitled ‘What diabetes means to us’ to help us all to understand the impact of diabetes on people living with diabetes, and their families and friends, as well as people who work in the field of diabetes. There are many misconceptions about type 1, type 2 and other types of diabetes, and very often the voices of people who live and work with diabetes remain unheard. Therefore, we wanted to create an opportunity for everyone who knows something about diabetes to share some of their experience during this discovery of insulin centenary year, as well as learn more about the important research we do.
While we had planned to host an in-person event, due to the ongoing pandemic we altered our plans to incorporate more of our event online and set up a new website, which to date has had over 1,500 views. We wanted people to be able to interact with this centenary celebration, wherever in the world they were, and thus we decided to create a video about the research we do. Through our BSI Communicating Immunology grant we shared the story of Alex, a young adult living with type 1 diabetes, who wanted to learn more about why people develop type 1 diabetes, as well as our research to help prevent it.
Alex met with members of the Cardiff Diabetes Research Group and discussed current ongoing research. This journey to discovery helped him to better understand what type 1 diabetes means to us as researchers and how we can work together to develop new strategies to target the immune system. Our research video telling Alex’s story was shown at the Hearth Gallery, Llandough Hospital, Wales for any patients/visitors/staff on site as part of a larger diabetes art event aimed at both increasing awareness of what diabetes is and what it means to people affected by diabetes (directly or indirectly), as well as online for everyone else to enjoy. You can watch it here. We encourage all those who wish to learn more about type 1 diabetes to view and share it.
Positive impact
We have received so much positive feedback from attendees in person or from those who viewed online about how accessible it was and how much they learnt about type 1 diabetes. We shared our event details and research video with diabetes charities who also publicised the event and video for us, which helped us reach a wider audience. We learnt, as a group, what type 1 diabetes means to those who have it, how to communicate difficult scientific terminology and concepts more effectively to the broader public, as well as how props can be used to break up long dialogue effectively and also promote accessibility to the research. We worked very closely with an artist-in-residence, Bridget O’Brien, who kindly volunteered her time to help us (and she will always be an honorary lab member), as well as a film-maker, Richard Thomas, who helped us storyboard ideas and write our script in order to make the messages as clear as possible. This certainly took time but was very much worth it!
Top engagement tips
All of the Diabetes Research Group at Cardiff University have gained a lot of confidence in public engagement and new skills, and we very much look forward to planning the next engagement event! We recommend planning any such event, well in advance (our event was planned over 18 months), contacting your university engagement staff (great at promoting the event and letting you know what does and doesn’t work well from experience) and where possible, involving people with the condition you work on in all your discussions, and work with them, to gain a much greater perspective, give meaning to your work in human terms, and make everything you do as accessible as possible.
Dr James Alexander Pearson, Professor F. Susan Wong and the Cardiff Diabetes Research Group, with special thanks to Bridget O'Brien, Richard Thomas and everyone who watched our research video
BSI Communicating Immunology grant
Our Communicating Immunology grant scheme is designed to spark interest, discussion and understanding of immunology among a wider audience, with a particular interest in reaching new or traditionally hard to reach audiences. If you’re looking for funding for your next public engagement project, please visit the grant page.