Sedulous Collective
Systematic Review
2025
Live
Sedulous CIC has embarked on a 10-month long inquiry to confront a deceptively simple question: when research is carried out about people who experience the greatest health and social inequities, whose knowledge truly drives the work?For decades, Black and other racially minoritised groups, disabled and neurodivergent people, women confronting intersecting barriers and households living with chronic illness or low income have figured in reports chiefly as statistics. Their insights, priorities and ways of knowing rarely steer the research agenda or the policy conversations that follow.
Over the past two decades a quiet methodological revolution has challenged that imbalance. Story-telling projects let tenants photograph damp walls and draft their own housing evidence. Theatre workshops transform lived experience into scripts that officials cannot ignore. Co-designed focus groups place elders at the front of the room, not the back. These qualitative, decolonised, participatory and creative approaches show that communities can be authors, not subjects—yet they are scattered across disciplines and hidden in grey literature. No comprehensive map exists of where, how and with what consequences these approaches have been used. Sedulous’ new systematic review and narrative synthesis—registered with PROSPERO (CRD420250651475)—sets out to create that map.
Grounded in our mission to decolonise research practice and redistribute power in knowledge production, the project began by broadening the very notion of “evidence.” Traditional databases alone could never reveal the full picture, so our search spans community archives, advocacy briefs and arts-based repositories alongside peer-reviewed journals. Early horizon-scanning is already revealing stark contrasts: some studies show how genuinely co-produced research can influence local decision-making and unlock new resources, while others illustrate situations in which “participation” amounts to little more than a token consultation or steering-group photo-op. These glimpses underline what is at stake when method choice and community involvement are handled well—or poorly.
Crucially, the review is narrative as well as systematic. It will record numbers—the frequency of photovoice, digital storytelling, ethnodrama, PAR—but also the stories behind those numbers: how a mural-making project persuaded planners to redesign a public park; why a digital‐storytelling study stalled at the ethics stage; what it felt like for participants when data ownership was genuinely shared. By weaving statistics and stories together, the review aims to speak to both methodology scholars and frontline organisers weighing up which approach will honour, rather than extract from, their communities.
The evidence generated here will become the backbone of the forthcoming Sedulous Inclusive Research Toolkit & Training Programme, a suite of practical templates, checklists and facilitation guides that community organisations and institutional partners can adapt with confidence. Looking ahead, Sedulous will seek additional funding to translate the review’s findings into a fully developed Toolkit and Training Programme and to pilot these resources across multiple London boroughs. Pilots will be designed with a range of communities and subject areas—such as mental-health research, housing justice and food-security initiatives—so the materials can be tested, refined and proven useful in varied real-world settings.
Ultimately, this review is about more than cataloguing literature. It is about reshaping relationships between researchers and participants, evidence and action, knowledge and justice. By illuminating what truly participatory, community-owned research looks like in practice, Sedulous aims to move the sector from consultation to co-creation, ensuring that the communities who bear the brunt of inequality also hold the pen that writes the solutions.
Evidence that drives health and social policy is still too often produced about rather than with the very people who live the realities being studied. Methods that promise genuine power-sharing exist, but no clear, field-tested guidance shows practitioners which ones deliver on that promise, under what conditions, and for whom. By systematically mapping the current landscape, this project will:
In short, the review is a critical step toward Sedulous’ wider goal of advancing inclusive research—ensuring that communities who face the greatest inequities also shape the knowledge intended to address them.
Sedulous is conducting a systematic review and narrative synthesis of peer-reviewed and grey-literature studies published since 2010. The work is led by Sedulous’ research team in collaboration with Dr Brenda Hayanga (City, University of London – St George’s), who provides methodological guidance on search strategy, screening, critical appraisal and synthesis. Searches span multidisciplinary databases (e.g., PubMed, Scopus, Google Scholar) and community archives to capture both academic and practice-based evidence on community-centred qualitative, participatory and creative methods.
Running in parallel to the desk-based review, we hold regular workshops with a cohort of lived-experience co-researchers. These sessions surface first-hand perspectives on where traditional research creates barriers and invite participants to re-imagine what inclusive, equitable and non-extractive practice could look like in real-world projects. Insights from the workshops are logged in a reflexive journal and will be integrated with the literature findings to shape the structure, language and practical tools of the forthcoming Sedulous Toolkit & Training Programme.
By combining rigorous evidence synthesis with participatory inquiry, this mixed approach ensures the final outputs are both academically robust and grounded in community realities.
True to Sedulous’ ethos of power-sharing, community members sit inside the research team rather than outside it. We anchor this project in our signature 4D model (Discover, Define, Develop, Deliver) to ensure community voices drive every stage. Thirteen paid co-researchers, each bringing distinct lived expertise, shape the inquiry from first workshop to final rollout. Their presence is more than symbolic. By embedding insight, challenge and creative problem-solving in every stage, they keep the project tethered to the realities, values and ambitions of the people it is designed for.
Together, these steps ensure the review is not simply about communities but with and for them—turning lived experience into methodological rigour, and rigour into tools that spark real-world change. Each co-researcher’s contribution will be formally acknowledged in all publications, toolkit materials and public presentations, underscoring their role as co-authors of both the evidence and the solutions. With their guidance, every milestone brings us closer to research that communities can recognise as their own and outcomes they can immediately put to work.
We’re proud to collaborate with Dr Brenda Hayanga and Dr Katie Rose Sanfilippo at City St George’s University, whose partnership has been pivotal in making our review genuinely participatory. Through the university’s Open2Communities programme we received £1,000 specifically to pay our co-researchers, enabling them to contribute as paid partners rather than unpaid consultees. That investment does more than cover time—it redistributes power, embeds lived experience in research decisions, and sets a standard for equitable knowledge production. By combining academic rigour with fair compensation and shared decision-making, this collaboration helps move the sector from extractive models to co-created evidence that communities recognise as their own and that practitioners and policymakers can trust.
The systematic review will conclude later this year, delivering a clear evidence base on what makes research truly inclusive and community-centred. Our next milestone is to secure external funding that will move the project from insight to action: full development of the Sedulous Toolkit & Training Programme and a series of live pilots across multiple London boroughs. The funding will support co-design sessions with our co-researchers, production of user-ready templates and learning modules, and field-testing with community partners working on issues such as mental health, housing and food security. By the end of the pilot phase we aim to have a refined, shareable toolkit and accredited training offer that any organisation can adopt to embed equity and participation at the core of its research practice.
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