Let's Talk Sugar wins Cultural Institute at King's award

The School of Life Course Sciences is pleased to announce that Amanda Moore, Doctoral Researcher in the Department of Diabetes, has won first prize in the Cultural Institute at King’s Collaborative Innovation Scheme for Early Career Researchers for her project “Let’s Talk Sugar”.

Type 2 diabetes is four times more common in UK African and Caribbean communities compared to the general population. Amanda’s research with Dr Louise Goff and the HEAL-D team showed that patients didn’t really consider diabetes until after they had been diagnosed and that parents listened to dietary and lifestyle advice that their children had learnt at school. Let’s Talk Sugar, a collaboration between Amanda and visual artist Annie Nicholson, therefore aimed to both raise awareness of how lifestyle choices can influence your risk of type 2 diabetes and to stimulate discussion between generations.

‘I got involved because I wanted to understand a disease that affects so many people within my community. The work I made shows how we need to start taking better care of ourselves from an early stage and really consider what we consume.’ Gosa, young artist.

The project ran for a year and included science and creative workshops with young artists in East London, a programme of outreach and a community exhibition at SPACE gallery in Hackney. The artists, aged 15 and 16, worked to express their own feelings about diabetes in a variety of ways. Some chose visual art others dance, music and poetry. Speaking of the project’s success Amanda said:

‘It’s empowering to learn what you can do to help avoid and manage [type 2 diabetes] and we’ve heard stories of mum’s getting off the bus to walk a bit more, families walking together after dinner and members of the group giving up sweets and sugary drinks for a month! I firmly believe changing the way people think about being proactive and valuing their health starts with the younger generations and this project has developed knowledge in a way that traditional health education never would in this age group.”

If you want to follow in Amanda’s footsteps and see how your research can have impact beyond academia, the Cultural Institute at King’s is now accepting applications for 2018/19.