When I was approached to support Cloudy With A Chance of Pain, a large citizen science project, I quickly realised the challenge: hardly any budget, but a big, important story to tell. The project had already engaged participants from across the UK, collecting data on how weather affected chronic pain. But there was a missing piece—the human experience behind the data.

Rather than focus solely on the scientific findings, I saw an opportunity: let the participants tell their own stories. Inspired by the raw, deeply personal video diaries of the 1990s, I proposed a low-cost but high-impact solution:

🎥 Self-Interviewing Participants – I designed an approach where participants would record their own reflections, responding to carefully crafted questions that would draw out their lived experiences, fears, and hopes.

🎞️ Storytelling as a Bridge – Instead of presenting polished, impersonal narratives, I curated and edited these clips into compelling short videos, maintaining their authenticity while making them accessible to wider audiences.

📺 National Media Impact – The BBC initially covered the project by interviewing the excellent scientists who designed it. But ITN took a different approach, picking up on the participant stories that I had helped bring to life. They broadcast excerpts from the self-interviews, giving the citizen scientists a national platform to share their experiences. Nora, appeared on the ITN news giving a longer interview. Seeing their voices amplified was an incredibly rewarding moment.

💡 Emotional Connection & Scientific Impact – One of the most moving parts of the project was watching a group of data-driven researchers experience a deep emotional response to the stories we had collected. When they saw Janet—one of the participants—open up about her fear of inheriting the same crippling pain that had affected her grandmother, they cried. The numbers they worked with every day suddenly had faces, emotions, and human weight. That connection was transformative—not just for the audience but for the researchers themselves.

A Scientist’s Perspective

Anna Beukenhorst, the scientist leading the public engagement efforts, later wrote:

“Alys applied her editing and storytelling skills on a public engagement campaign I organised. The videos reached a vast audience on social media and also on national TV. The campaign benefitted from Alys' expertise in videography and storytelling, as Alys was able to collate the stories of patients with musculoskeletal conditions in an engaging way, suitable for social media. Working with Alys was a pleasure. She delivered fantastic work on very tight timelines and had a vision for the campaign from the start. The collaboration was fruitful: the efficient meetings, frequent updates, and Alys’s high-quality work have made both process and outcome a big success.”

The Power of Storytelling in Research Engagement

This project reinforced something I have always believed: stories have the power to move people in ways that data alone cannot. By centring lived experiences, we were able to:
✅ Deepen public engagement with the research.
✅ Shift media narratives, ensuring that participants’ voices were heard.
✅ Strengthen researcher-participant connections, bringing emotion and empathy into the data.

Public engagement doesn’t always need a big budget—it needs the right approach. Sometimes, the most powerful thing you can do is hand the microphone to the people at the heart of the story.