Experimenting with creative research methods for young people

Yesterday we made our last trip out west to run focus groups with healthy school kids about cancer and young people (for the Growing Up with Cancer project). We asked them to work in small groups to develop and perform a 3 minute current affairs/news style presentation about a young person their age that has cancer. Over 3 focus groups with high school drama students we saw lots of performances, ranging from the expected (sad) to the wild (cancer jokes!). Our motivation was to use methods that would break open the usual victims and heroes discourses about cancer in young people. And it worked. An awesome data generation technique, an enthusiastic group of students and a supportive school and teacher.