SHaME at Engage Online 2023: Can public engagement be truly ethical?

At 2023's annual NCCPE Engage Conference, SHaME Public Engagement Lead, Dr Rhea Sookdeosingh, presented sessions on ethical public engagement and the Shameless! Festival of Activism Against Sexual Violence.
For the morning's Provocation session, Rhea asked 'can public engagement be truly ethical?' This provocation was aimed at starting a conversation about how we can do public engagement as ethically as possible. As community and civic engagement in particular gain more prominence, the need to be ethical in how we engage with communities, especially vulnerable ones, is critically important. There is already a lot of thinking around this in the sector, as well as resources, support and communities of practice. However, there are still questions to be asked at all levels - public engagement professionals, academics, and university leadership - about how ethical engagement practices are currently and what we can do to improve them and ensure we are working with external partners and audiences in ways that aren’t exploitative and don’t uphold or reinforce societal inequities. The aim of this session was therefore to inspire a conversation about these issues and encourage participants to reflect on their own roles and projects, as well as how they could be drivers of change at an institutional and/or sectoral level.
You can read more about Rhea's contributions to the Engage Online 2023 Conference here: shame.bbk.ac.uk/blog/shame-at...
Find out more about The SHaME Project at shame.bbk.ac.uk/.

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Life is a sequence of joyful events and catastrophes with long stretches of real life in between. Life is hard. Get a helmet and get to work…and STOP over-talking and iver-thinking EVERYTHING !!