Knowledge Hub
Reports, insight & stories.
Everything we learn, shared openly. Browse our reports, field insight and case studies.
Method Statement: Genomics in Healthcare
At People Street, our work on Genomics, Healthcare & You is grounded in a simple belief: the decisions we make today must honour and protect future generations. We draw on Roman Krznaric’s The Good Ancestor to guide our long-term approach, rooting our methodology in community wisdom, intergenerational responsibility, and design justice.
Read →ReportOur Voice on Climate, Justice & Spivak
East London is where People Street began. It's a place shaped by industry, by generations of migration, by rivers and low-lying land, and now, more and more, by climate change. Heatwaves hit tower blocks hardest. Air pollution settles unevenly, street by street with pollution rates intensifying since the opening of Silvertown tunnel. Climate change is not felt equally across London. And climate research and climate policy don't always ask the right people the right questions. We've been listening to Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's 2025 conversation “Learning From Below,” where she turns to the planet itself, to what she calls planetarity. Her ideas are not easy. But they help us think more clearly about what climate justice actually asks of us, and how that connects to the work we do with communities across East London.
Read →ReportOur Voice on Learning to Learn from Below
In January 2026, we wrote a blog about Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's essay Can the Subaltern Speak? It asked us hard questions about who gets heard, and what we are really doing when we say we are “listening.” Since then, we've been listening to something new. In June 2025, Spivak sat down in Oslo for a conversation called “Learning From Below,” as part of the Holberg Prize. In it, she goes further into one word: subaltern. What it means. Who it applies to. And what it asks of people like us, who do research and outreach for a living. This blog doesn't repeat what we said last time. It goes deeper into just one idea, so we can be clearer and more careful in how we use it.
Read →ReportShaping our care
These personas are based on real people. These are the living experiences of people who took part in community research conversations in July 2026.
Read →InsightOur Voice on AI in healthcare
We asked 45 people what they think about AI helping make decisions in the NHS. We asked the following questions: - Is it okay for AI to help make health decisions? - How important is it to understand how the AI reached its answer? - Would AI make the NHS more fair, or less fair?
Read →Case studyTransforming Climate & Health research through community leadership
How collaboration between academics, researchers and community-led research can shift power back to the people most affected by climate change.
Read →Case studyThreads in Common: A Creative Mental Health project as a form of resistance
A creative mental wealth project responding to the current political and social climate on migration and asylum. We are responding through unity and connection. These hybrid sessions use the power of video calls to create connection. Each participant receives a pack with all the supplies we need to design and make a shoe. The shoe is a symbol of our journeys, all we have left behind, and where we are heading. Its a three-part series that dismantles the destructive narratives bestowed upon us.
Read →InsightDesigning health messages that actually land
So you found our post, that means you’re either lost or are on a journey to embed inclusive design. You’re here now! So why don't we start in the middle since it's rather boring going from the start. At People Street, we use the term Design Justice with a capital J to refer to practices which embed equity and intersectional thinking along the design process. There are many principles governing our praxis. In today’s blog, we are going to unpick 3 of these principles to demonstrate how you can achieve gold-standard design wherever you are in the world. Let;’s treat this as an inquiry and explore the questions you could begin asking yourself. Are you ready?
Read →ReportOur Voice on Bowel Screening
In 2024/25, we can delivered a series of our HealthWise sessions across East London to promote Cancer Screening amongst global majority communities. Communities shared the barriers and challenges they experience accessing cancer screening. Please read the Our Voice on Cancer Screening I report for more insight. What emerged from this work was the need for health literacy in an accessible format. So in 2025/26 we set out to co-design, co-produce and evaluate health literacy videos in mother tongue as a way to drive uptake of bowel screening.
Read →ReportOur Voice on Cancer Screening II
Health literacy sessions designed to tackle health inequalities. Delivered in mother tongue across Tower Hamlets and Newham, in partnership with the Somali Senior Citizens Club.
Read →Case studyImproving bowel screening uptake in global majority communities
Understanding and removing the barriers that stop people taking up life-saving screening. We submitted the poster above to this years NIHR London Conference. Our research shows that creating accessible health literacy does not need to be expensive or time consuming. Investing in health literacy as part of the prevention agenda will drive up screening uptake.
Read →InsightWhat Are We Doing When We Say We Are “Listening”?
This is a long-form blog that is deliberately reflective, theoretically grounded, and rooted in People Street’s lived practice. I’ve written it to think with Spivak rather than simply about her, and to show how her questions actively shape how People Street designs, holds and approaches holds community research. I draw directly on Spivak’s own questions and provocations from Can the Subaltern Speak? and explicitly connect them to design justice, outreach, power, mediation, and the ethics of representation in research. Where Spivak’s thinking is referenced, it is grounded in our practice
Read →Case studyOur Voice on Genomics in healthcare
The aim was to explore the perspectives, attitudes, hopes, fears and dreams amongst global majority communities with regards to the use of genomics in healthcare. We adapted "The Good Ancestor" methodology to promote longterm-thinking-mindset. The Good Ancestor methodology involves a six-stage structured process where participants consider their past, present and future – and through this could consider what it means to be good ancestors in the context of genomics. The method was selected to empower communities and ensure the conversation could move beyond current, relatively negative experiences of healthcare and embrace hopes for a better future.
Read →ReportOur Voice on Can the subaltern speak?
At People Street, Spivak’s work matters precisely because it resists simplification. In a research landscape increasingly populated by the language of inclusion, participation, and co-production, Spivak asks a more difficult question: “Can the subaltern speak?” Or, more uncomfortably, what happens when they do? and who is heard? This question runs like a quiet, insistent thread through everything we do.
Read →InsightOur Voice on Can the Subaltern Speak?
At People Street, Spivak’s work matters precisely because it resists simplification. In a research landscape increasingly populated by the language of inclusion, participation, and co-production, Spivak asks a more difficult question: “Can the subaltern speak?” Or, more uncomfortably, what happens when they do? and who is heard? This question runs like a quiet, insistent thread through everything we do.
Read →Case studyOur Health, Our Data
Our Health, Our Data is a 9-month project which will culminate in a Roundtable in September 2026. The aim of the project is to engage asylum and refugee communities to explore their perspectives on health data to access care, data linkage, data stewardship, consent and data for health research.
Read →InsightWhy community researchers reach where surveys can't
Lessons from two decades of work on the ground.
Read →ReportOur Voice on Welfare Reform
The purpose of this research was to surface the living experiences of the communities most impacted by welfare reform. Our aim is to act as bridges into communities traditionally excluded from mainstream conversations.
Read →ReportOur Voice on Climate & Health
Listening to the neighbourhoods most exposed to poor air quality and a changing climate in East London.
Read →ReportOur Voice on Cancer Screening I
Surfacing the barriers to cancer screening across East London amongst global majority women.
Read →InsightOvercoming Obstacles: 8 Frustrations of User Researchers
In the fast-paced world of technology teams, there are many challenges to navigate. For user researchers, designers and product managers, these challenges can be particularly daunting when you’re also attempting to adopt inclusivity as a practice. Our research retros with partners offers an opportunity to reflect on the pain points, fears, desires and vent frustrations. Let's explore the top 8 frustrations we hear most often from our colleagues.
Read →InsightHow to achieve Design Justice
So you found our post, that means you’re either lost or are on a journey to embed inclusive design. You’re here now! So why don't we start in the middle since it's rather boring going from the start. At People Street, we use the term Design Justice with a capital J to refer to practices which embed equity and intersectional thinking along the design process. There are many principles governing our praxis. In today’s blog, we are going to unpick 3 of these principles to demonstrate how you can achieve gold-standard design wherever you are in the world. Let;’s treat this as an inquiry and explore the questions you could begin asking yourself. Are you ready?
Read →Case studyDigital Asylum
Since 2023, People Street has been supporting the User Centre Design colleagues to actively test asylum and migration products and policies with the communities who need to access these new services. This is our flagship Design Justice project. It is evidence that centring the experiences and voices of the most excluded communities can reduce digital exclusion. We work inclusively. The work is led by people with lived experience. Asylum communities are shaping services.
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