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Objective: High levels of social and economic deprivation are apparent in many UK cities. There is evidence of certain 'marginalised' communities suffering disproportionately from poor nutrition, threatening health. Finding ways to engage with these communities is essential to identify strategies to optimise wellbeing and life skills. The Food as a Lifestyle Motivator project aimed to pilot creative methods in homeless adults for the examination of food related experiences, in order to facilitate their engagement in wellbeing discourse. Design: Creative Participatory Action Research methods including Photo-Elicitation. Setting: A homeless service provider in Plymouth, UK Method: A sample of homeless service users took photographs of their food activities over a ten-day period, then volunteered to share their photos in focus group discussions to elicit meaning related to their food experiences. Results: Five themes were generated from nine service user narratives, demonstrating that food holds meaning, elicits emotion, and exerts power. The food environment can be a critical social meeting place and food preparation can provide companionship and occupation. Conclusions: As well as being central to many health concerns, food may also be a powerful way to motivate people to change their lifestyle. The participatory methods used in this pilot hold potential to engage effectively with harder-to-reach service users. Discussions about their wellbeing indicate food as a powerful 'catalyst' for inclusion with the potential to empower individuals. This research serves to inform health education practice, design of services, and address (nutritional) health inequalities.

PEARL https://pearl.plymouth.ac.uk Faculty of Arts and Humanities School of Law, Criminology and Government 2020-03 Making time for food when 'doing time'; how enhanced status prisoners counter the indignity of prison foodways Parsons, JM

In this article, we report on our experience of working on an exploratory project where the primary objective was to involve homeless service users with food-based participatory qualitative approaches. The project FLM aimed to explore food experiences and behaviours in a sample of users of homelessness services in a south west UK coastal city, in order to create solutions to improve their wellbeing. A mixture of qualitative methods was used, including observations, photo-elicitation and focus group discussions. We aimed to be participatory and 'creative' in our approach and in our analysis. Here, we focus on detailing and critiquing our approach to the collection and analysis of data.

The Joy of Food Play -Gender and Class in Men's auto/biographical Accounts of Everyday Food-waysThis article is informed by research that set out to investigate the relationship between individuals and their everyday food-ways using an auto/biographical research approach. The focus of this article centres on the notion of food 'play' rather than food 'work' as significant in the performance of a gendered cultural habitus, whereby men distanced themselves from notions of feminised domesticity and health discourses by resorting to both hegemonic masculinities and epicurean foodways. Despite a contemporary trend that emphasises fluidities across gender boundaries and shifting roles, the 75 respondents in the study that informs this article presented their food autobiographies as a type of transformation narrative heavily influenced by the continued intersectionalities of gender and class. Indeed, for the male respondents in this UK based study, a commitment to epicurean food-ways becomes a field for the performance of hegemonic masculinities with the gourmet food adventurer emerging from this culinary field coded elite and male. This raises questions with regards to cultural influences on everyday food-ways, as well as notions of what it means to be a gourmet, epicure, or food adventurer within a contemporary foodscape.