The brief
- Birmingham City Council’s Public Health division were eager to hear how recent demographic changes captured in the 2021 Census are impacting the health and wellbeing of Birmingham residents.
- Shift were commissioned to conduct interviews with a wide range of citizens living in Birmingham. These were designed to capture residents’ insights and experiences, to create anonymous case studies for use in public-facing documents.
The approach
- Shift conducted 30 interviews with Birmingham residents, each lasting 45-minutes, to understand their lived experiences.
- The interviews explored six selected topics (age, ethnicity, gender identity and sexual orientation, migration, housing, and employment) as a means of understanding where the major changes in demographics had occurred, and what the current and future implications of these changes are on residents’ health and wellbeing.
- Each participant was carefully selected based on their lived experience relating to one or more of the six topics. The interview findings were used to form a case study for each individual.
The value
The case studies highlighted how these demographic changes and trends have impacted the everyday lives of Birmingham citizens. They have helped Birmingham Council understand citizens’ perspectives on and lived experiences of the demographic changes to the city. They were included in the Director of Public Health’s Annual Report 2023/24.
