"Engaging with communities in creative ways, collaborating with artists and using participatory methodologies are real options for scientists. Creative methodologies can be particularly helpful to nurture genuine expression, subvert power and catalyse discussion."

This report is based on conversations that took place at a workshop in Thailand in June 2011. The workshop was generated by the United Kingdom (UK)-based Wellcome Trust's belief that public engagement activities should create a bridge between the research community and the general public, community groups, civil society organisations, and any other groups or communities where research gains its relevance. Amongst the questions that participants explored: "For all our endeavours to engage the public and communities with science, what are the ethical implications of our actions? How do we know when we are doing good community engagement and for the right reasons? How do we learn from what we do, and put that learning back into our practice?"

A multi-site participatory video project fed directly into the workshop and helped frame discussions by exploring perspectives and bringing voices from different research contexts. Artists, dramatists, filmmakers, writers, and poets shared creative methodologies in an effort to inspire new approaches to community engagement. This report documents the discussions held and creative methods used throughout the conference. For instance, each day, 3 poet delegates wrote poetry inspired by the discussions that took place; the poetry is featured in the report.

Excerpts from the report follow:
"Are you designing an engagement intervention? Have you thought about the following things?

Who?

• Engagement takes place as an exchange between different people. Who do you want to engage with? Who do you want to engage with you? Who is making efforts to engage with you already (community advocacy groups, media etc.)?
• If you decide you want to engage with a 'community', what does this mean? Is the 'community' a geographically located community? Or a social or identity-based community? Or perhaps a community of patients?
• ...Often, scientists engage with community representatives. But who represents the community? Are they powerful people with particular interests and agendas? How much do you know about them and what they want? Are they a fair representative of the rest of the community? How do you go about achieving this given the communities own demands on time and resource?

When?
• At what point and over what duration of time do you want scientists and communities to engage with each other? Engagement can take place as a long-term approach, designed to build continuous relationships between scientists and community members. Some engagement strategies focus on short-term interventions for a particular project.
• At what stage within the research programme or project do you engage? Is this upstream at the point of research design and research agenda setting? Or is it more appropriate to start engagement further along in the life of the research project?
• ...How much time are you asking the community to spend on engagement activities? Is this realistic?

Why?
• Engagement can have a variety of goals such as benefitting public health, informing and influencing health policies, ensuring ethical conduct, advocacy on behalf of otherwise unheard voices, accountability of the research to government or the public, consultation and empowerment and community mobilisation. What is the goal of your engagement?....It is important to be clear about why you want to engage communities and this should inform your strategy and approaches.

How?
• ...There are many participatory and creative methodologies, including film, theatre, poetry and other artistic forms, that can be used to allow communities to express themselves in ways they control and are able to use effectively.
• Participatory processes should encourage a process of 'conscientisation' so that communities become critically aware of science and health research. Empowerment is a legitimate outcome of community engagement.

What?
• Community engagement should mean a two-way exchange. Scientists need to find ways to understand and engage with communities...It is important to remember that there are always multiple agendas in relation to health research. If a community rejects or opposes a scientific health project or programme, what, as a scientist, would you do?...

Evaluating engagement?
• ...Can you find ways to document the engagement process from the scientists' point of view? Could you think about ways to find out from the community their experiences of engagement?
• Is external evaluation of community engagement the most appropriate course of action?...
• Ultimately, how can we collectively provide an evidence base for the value of engagement?"