The Challenge

Liverpool has a long history of strong and active communities and vibrant creativity, but also faces entrenched health inequalities that mean many local people live shorter lives with fewer years of good health than they should.

Routine health interventions such as cancer screening and childhood immunisation have fallen well below national targets. There is an increasing burden of poor mental wellbeing and widespread mistrust in government and public health information. Traditional health interventions often fail to reach the communities that need them most, creating gaps in preventive care and early intervention.

These disparities are particularly acute in Liverpool, Knowsley, and South Sefton—some of the region’s poorest areas where structural barriers and systemic mistrust prevent people from accessing essential health services.

About the Project

ReCITE  blends creativity with healthcare by building storytelling into community and health systems to address mistrust and promote wellbeing. We work with a wide range of academic and creative partners in collaboration with people living in Liverpool, Knowsley, and South Sefton, using the power of stories to promote health prevention and mental wellbeing.

Our overall aim is to scale up and sustain the integration of storytelling into community and health system efforts to promote health equity by building a legacy of trust and collaborative action between communities, storytelling assets, and health providers in the poorest areas of Merseyside.

Storytelling is our way of collecting data, highlighting inequities, providing health messages to communities, and redirecting public agendas to better promote health equity. We expect commissioners and policymakers to see the benefits of scaling up and sustaining a strategic creative health approach that builds community trust and increases health equity.Our Strategies and Approaches

Storytelling Partnerships for Change

We are creating multimedia stories with diverse partners to address misinformation and inequities, giving voice to communities who have been systematically excluded from health conversations.

Community Innovation Teams

We are partnering with the Integrated Care Board (ICB) and Director of Public Health Liverpool to work closely with community champions in the most challenged areas. These community-led teams develop solutions tailored to local needs, focusing on:

Preventive healthcare: Encouraging essential services like immunisations and cancer screenings
Wellbeing support: Promoting early intervention to help individuals avoid serious mental health issues

Creative Health Marketplaces

We connect different sectors through events and projects focused on specific health goals, promoting collaboration between communities, health sectors, and creative sectors to break down silos.

Advocacy Networks

We are testing networks to address broader structural issues beyond community interventions, tackling systemic barriers that perpetuate health inequities.

Learning Events

We host celebration, evaluation, and scale-up events that measure impact and track progress, developing tools to assess the effectiveness of our approach.

Capacity Strengthening

We strengthen capacity with community organisations, people with lived experience, health practitioners, and storytellers in research, storytelling, and measuring health equity changes.

Our Key Findings & Impact

What’s Your Story: Giving Voice, Catalysing Change

Our flagship storytelling programme has empowered community members across Kirkby, Bootle, and Toxteth to share their experiences of navigating health systems. Through creative workshops, participants transformed their struggles and resilience into powerful stories amplified through immersive films and performances. Storytelling is sparking change, reshaping conversations, and challenging health inequities.

Read the full case study

Creative Health Exchange – Breaking Down Sector Silos

The 1st Creative Health Exchange in Liverpool revealed how community-rooted creativity builds trust, breaks down sector silos, and drives sustainable health change. The event showcased storytelling as a powerful tool to tackle inequalities and shape future public health strategies, demonstrating the effectiveness of multi-sectoral collaboration.

Read the full case study

Anfield & Everton #BeBreastSavvyLiverpool Campaign

The Health Equity Liverpool Project (HELP) Community Innovation Team in North Liverpool, led by Dr Simon Abrams, brought together community organisations, creatives, volunteers, social prescribers, GP practices, nurses, care coordinators, and data specialists to increase breast cancer awareness and screening uptake in underserved communities.

Read more

Regional Innovation Insights

A roundtable discussion during Liverpool City Region’s inaugural Innovation Fortnight challenged traditional innovation models, suggesting that research should be driven by communities, not conducted on them. Community voices highlighted the need for ethical approaches, adequate resources, and genuine co-production to build inclusive, trust-based innovation ecosystems.

Read the reflection