Mohn Centre Blog: Swipe Up or Switch Off at the W12 festival with Yusuf Ibrahim

At the heart the W12 Festival, the Mohn Centre brought research to life in unexpected ways - with a giant inflatable phone and community insights.

At the heart of this year’s W12 Festival, the Mohn Centre brought research to life in unexpected ways - with a giant inflatable phone and community-powered insight. In this blog post, Yusuf Ibrahim, Involvement and Engagement Officer at the Mohn Centre for Children's Health and Wellbeing and West London Children's Healthcare, reflects on his experiences at the W12 festival for the White City community.

What do you get when you mix sunshine, a music stage, face painting, horses, a dog show, me in an orange Mohn Centre t-shirt and Panama hat, holding a GIANT inflatable phone?

You get the Mohn Centre at W12 Festival, part research, part roaming theatre, part takeover party, all about community-powered insight. This wasn't your usual research setting, no lab coats or clipboards. Just real talk, real people, and a few questionable dance moves.

This year, I was speaking about our ‘Swipe Up or Switch Off?’ involvement project exploring young people's relationship with smartphones and how to encourage healthy screen habits. The Mohn Centre has been working on this with Nova New Opportunities and local schools to White City. The festival gave us a chance to take these conversations further directly into the hands of the community and see how their views compared.

I posed the big questions:

• Should smartphones be banned in schools?
• What are the biggest challenges managing screen time at home?

What happened?

People laughed, debated and argued over whose fault it was (parents? schools? government? tech companies?), choosing boxes which aligned with their opinions, not too dissimilar from that Channel 4 tv show with Noel Edmunds. Young people also voted on which activities they preferred like scrolling on TikTok or trampolining – any guesses which was more popular?

My reflection

Research isn't just about data (okay a bit), but for me it’s the people. Now three months into my role at the Mohn Centre and West London Children’s Healthcare, real insights and trust happens when you show up where the community are. As someone who's spent years working across youth services, schools, and health, this project hit home. I saw conversations between generations and strong opinions over the topic. Taking research and involvement work outside the institution to a park, a street, or a school doesn't water it down. It makes it relevant.