“You do not have to rely on your GP, with 25 medications.”

During the formative phases of our ‘medical scepticism’ project with Impact on Urban Health, we came across the work of Dr Caitjan Gainty, from Kings College London, and the ‘healthy scepticism’ project. We thus embarked on a partnership exploring how Brixton has been home to subcultural communities, and significantly, subaltern counterpublic health spheres.

Brixton is of major importance here due to its significance when it comes to health activism and community-based initiatives, plus proactive actions taken by local people to improve their health. This was often parallel to official health institutions and via converging a range of medical and therapeutic modalities. Moreover, combined with the distrust/mistrust nexus, this revealed a contested medi-scape within the heart of South London.

We opine this trend is also identified in similar locales where subaltern counterpublic spheres and subcultural groups are present, from Hackney to Harlem, Brent to the Bronx, Peckham to Philadelphia and Tottenham to Toronto.

The project Centric team has the tenacity to delve into locales which are replete with distrust and we were able to build a partnership with Kings College London, Dr Caitjin Gainty in particular. The videos which have been produced reflect Centric’s emphasis on nimble knowledge production and more creative ways to disseminate our findings into more digestible chunks.

Also importantly, we hear from some of our participants with whom we built a rapport via our social networks, where other researchers may struggle when it comes to access, which can then hinder research aims and outputs.

This project demonstrates that once a community’s capacity is built, the benefits for wider society are immense.