Learning to see: lessons from a participatory observation research project in public spaces

This article outlines the development and implementation of participatory research methodology centred on observational techniques. It discusses the theoretical understandings of the methodology and how it worked in practice. The research explored the use of public spaces by different social, ethnic and activity groups across the course of a 12 month period drawing on the experiences of, and data collected by local, non-academic researchers who were trained in a non-participatory semistructured observation. The article discusses how this method was developed and implemented and considers some of the issues around how participatory research works in practice.