Through engaging with and actively involving school stakeholders, the COMMUNICATE study aimed to co-create a toolkit that would support the communication of physical activity messages with adolescents.
For the past six months, a research steering group has guided students and staff from Active School Flag (ASF) schools through the co-creation process. The research steering group (pictured below, top left) consisted of researchers from the University of Limerick (Caera Grady, Prof Catherine Woods, Prof Elaine Murtagh, Dr Kwok Ng and Kathleen McNally) and University of Gent (Maite Verloigne) and knowledge users from ÓIDE (Brigid Corrigan) and Newport College in Tipperary (Principal: Donal Madden, PE teacher & ASF Coordinator: Jane Keating, TY students Lauren Keogh and Sam Caplis).
A series of co-creation workshops were run at each of the four Active School Flag Schools that agreed to participate in this study. The final workshop was held in the University of Limerick on the 26th of April 2024 (pictured above top right students and staff from Our Lady’s, Terenure and Colaiste Bride, Clondalkin). With the help of many hands a very successful day of sharing and designing the COMMUNICATE toolkit was had.
Missing from the final event was Ardgillan community college and St Benildus college. Nevertheless, they did not miss out on the opportunity to provide input (Picture above, bottom left Argillan college students and staff, bottom right St Benildus students).
Acknowledgements: This research was funded by the Irish Research Council Government of Ireland Postgraduate Scholarship. This research was supported by the Active School Flag, the Physical Activity for Health research centre, Health Research Institute and staff and students in the Department of Physical Education and Sport Sciences.
Author: Caera Grady