Focus group facilitation

What I do as a focus group facilitator

Focus group facilitation is a service I offer to heritage sites, museums, galleries and arts organisations who need real consultation with audiences they want to better understand. Particularly audiences they have not always reached. My job is to take a brief, find the right participants, support the design of the questions, and lead the sessions so you come away with honest, usable insight.

This is not a focus group run by somebody who is dropped in. It is a focus group run by somebody whose entire career has been about building trust with the communities you most want to hear from.

How I run focus group facilitation

Every project is shaped around the brief, but the work tends to flow through the same stages.

• We agree the brief together. Who do you need in the room, what do you want to learn, what will the sessions be used for
• I source the participants. I draw on my real, decades-old contacts in communities across the UK, and I match real people to the categories your project needs
• I create the contact spreadsheets, send the invites, explain the project and what participants will receive in return
• I co-create the questions with you, or I work to a question set you have prepared
• I lead the sessions, in person or online, recorded with permission
• I feed back to you in a way that respects what people said and gives you real, actionable findings

• I have also led recorded aural history interviews for a real deep dive into the subject matter

A project I am very proud of

The first focus group facilitation work I did was for Harewood House in Leeds. They were redesigning their website and digital framework, and they wanted a more diverse voice and more culturally diverse images on their site. I was engaged to reach out to the African Caribbean community in Leeds and to source specific people for the focus groups, parents with children, parents without children, community leaders, students, all of those categories.

I built the contact list, sent the invitations, sat in on the first round of online and in-person sessions and co-ordinated the second round myself, working alongside the client to shape the questions. We were able to get really honest, useful information about what people felt about the site, including its relationship with the transatlantic slave trade.

That project showed me what this work can do when it is done with care. It is the kind of work I want to do more of, and it is exactly the kind of work I would love to do with you.

When focus group facilitation is the right fit

This service is well suited to projects where you need:

• Honest consultation with communities your organisation has not always reached
• A facilitator who can source participants from real, trusted contacts rather than a research panel
• Sensitivity around difficult subjects, including hidden histories and the legacies of enslaved people
• A consultant who can co-create the question set with you, or work to your existing brief
• Reporting that captures what people really said and gives you a usable next step

What you get when you bring me in

• Real, trusted participant sourcing across diverse UK communities
• Sensitive, well-prepared facilitation in person or online
• Co-creation of the question set or careful delivery of yours
• Honest reporting that respects the participants and serves your project
• A consultant who has done this work for organisations as significant as a major UK heritage site
• Creating a safe space for open and honest dialogue