Visibility to Resonance: How to Shape Culturally Competent Communications.

Taofique Folarin shares strategies to shape effective, culturally competent communications in your organisation.

As an Afro-queer gay man with Nigerian, Jamaican, and Scottish heritage, I move through many cultural, social, and structural boundaries. These parts of my identity are connected and shape how I experience systems, how others see me, and how I understand communication. As a result, I believe that for communication to be effective and equitable, cultural competence needs to be built in from the beginning. 

This article explores how communication that lacks cultural competency can exacerbate inequities and why this matters, as well as sharing practical tips for creating more culturally competent communication and practice. 

I speak as someone whose work combines public health, communications, and psychology. Through the London HIV Prevention Programme (LHPP), I develop digital outreach to improve access, engagement, and health outcomes for underserved communities. As founder and director of TAF Collective CIC, I use communication to improve health literacy, access, engagement, and equity for marginalised and racialised LGBTQ+  communities, as well as wider groups. We design initiatives that are inclusive,  representative, and culturally resonant. 

Across this work, I have learned that communication and engagement are never neutral - they are always influenced by culture. 

Who is reached - and who isn’t?

Digital communication often exposes how cultural attitudes appear in systems. It shapes what gets visibility, who is included, and also what is valued. When digital communication is designed with cultural awareness, it helps build connection and trust. Without this awareness, messages may seem inclusive but fail to truly engage people. 

Social Identity Theory, developed by Henri Tajfel and John Turner in the 1970s, posits that if people do not see themselves in a message, they might ignore it. Through my own work, I now understand that representation alone is not enough; real engagement requires resonance. Communication must go beyond visibility and truly reflect the lived experiences and perspectives of its audience. 

This is especially important for LGBTQ+ racialised communities, where identity is always intersectional. People in these groups navigate multiple layers of identity and cultures,  including race, sexuality, and gender. If communication fails to reflect these layers, it can erase real experiences, create mistrust and lower engagement. 

In health, policy, and communication, there has been a major shift toward inclusion. More organisations now consider representation, visibility, and ways to reach communities that have often been left out. At its best, this shift has led to more thoughtful approaches, co-designed campaigns, and better storytelling. However, communication is not just about sharing information. It is also about how people interpret what they receive. 

Our identity, memories, and experiences shape how we interpret messages, and different audiences can derive very different meanings from the same message. Frameworks such as the Campinha-Bacote Model help us understand cultural competence in professional practice. This model highlights five key parts: cultural awareness, knowledge, skill, encounters, and desire. Each part shows the importance of reflecting, learning, and engaging to build culturally responsive practice. These components apply directly to communication:

• Cultural awareness helps us examine our own assumptions and biases, which shape how we create messages.

• Cultural knowledge means understanding communities, their social backgrounds,  experiences, and views. 

• Cultural skill is about turning this understanding into the right language, tone, and messages. 

• Cultural encounters involve direct engagement with communities, so communication is grounded in real interaction rather than guesswork.

• Cultural desire is the motivation to keep participating with real intent. 

While these components are a good starting point, they do not always lead to effective communication in practice. There is often a gap between what individuals know and what organisations actually produce. Practitioners may be knowledgeable, but still work within systems that produce generic messages. 

Case Study:

Recently, I observed a drug use survey for London’s queer community that illustrated how design and language choices can reinforce bias and directly affect engagement. The campaign imagery and wording linked the only visibly Black individual to the question “What does chemsex mean to you?”, a highly stigmatised and negatively framed practice. Other visuals featuring white or non-black individuals were paired with broader, more humanising language, such as “mental health,” “boosting social confidence,” “coping strategies,” and “enhancing sexual connection.” From an objective viewpoint, this created a racialised narrative, implicitly associating Blackness with risk and deviance, while positioning whiteness within more nuanced and empathetic contexts. 

This is not simply an issue of representation, but of framing and perception. For some  Black queer individuals, the term “chemsex” does not reflect their lived experience or language around substance use. By centring this term within the only Black-facing visual,  the campaign risked alienating its intended audience, reinforcing existing stigma, and signalling that the research was not designed with their realities in mind. 

The consequence is not only ethical but also methodological. When communities feel misrepresented or stereotyped, trust drops, participation declines, and the resulting data becomes skewed. As highlighted by the low engagement among ethnically diverse groups, this was not just a recruitment issue but also a sign that the communication failed to resonate. This shows how subtle design decisions, such as image selection, wording,  and visual pairing, can have major effects on both inclusion and the validity of research outcomes. 

Communication failures have deep, lasting impacts.

This dynamic has existed for a long time. During the early years of the HIV/AIDS crisis in the 1980s and 1990s, public health communication frequently framed gay men primarily in terms of risk. Messaging often focused on danger and fear but rarely acknowledged the complexity of individuals’ lives, culture, or realities. 

Today, this tension continues in HIV prevention efforts to balance urgency with humanisation. Although messaging has changed, many campaigns still focus on risk and responsibility without fully reflecting the cultural realities of those affected. As a result, communication may be clinically accurate but emotionally distant when messages are developed without understanding or embedding the social, cultural, and structural contexts that shape the lives of affected populations. 

When communication treats marginalised and racialised population groups as homogeneous audiences, it overlooks the realities of people living at these intersections.  The same is true for migrant communities facing language barriers, immigration stress,  and culturally specific stigma, as well as for trans communities who are often erased or only shown in crisis. The commercial focus on the “pink pound” and repeated corporate tokenism during Pride Month highlight a bigger issue: visibility is welcomed when it is marketable, but not when it calls for real change. 

If communication is not developed with these intersecting realities in mind, it jeopardises the ability to address audiences broadly, resulting in only surface-level connections. It may reach people but fail to resonate with or truly engage them.  

   

Intentional messaging requires cultural competence.

People do not just process information; they quickly assess intent, safety, and relevance.  When messaging overlooks barriers such as mistrust of services or past experiences, it creates a gap between the intended message and how it is received. 

Culturally competent communication should anticipate these perceptions by using a tone that is informed rather than instructive, imagery that reflects real-world context, and stories that mirror real-life situations. These cues show that the audience’s culture has been considered throughout the design process, not just added in at the end. This makes it more likely that the message will be seen as safe, relevant, and actionable. 

That said, it is important to recognise the challenges organisations face. Time pressures,  limited funding, and the need to reach broad audiences can make tailored communication hard. These challenges do not lessen the need for cultural competency. Instead, they show why it is important to prioritise and design communications carefully within existing limits.  

There are practical ways to navigate these barriers. For example, organisations can start by working closely with a few priority communities before expanding as resources allow.  Using existing partnerships with community organisations can help ensure reach and relevance without needing major new infrastructure. By building on established trust, lived experience, and local expertise, communication can embed cultural resonance even with limited resources.

Tips for building cultural competency. 

To help translate this idea into practice, here are some key steps for integrating cultural  competency into communication: 

1. Begin with early consultation: Engage members of the key population at the start of the planning process to understand their perspectives, needs, and histories. 

2. Assess cultural context: Gather insights on cultural beliefs, values, and past experiences that shape the audience’s engagement with the topic. 

3. Diversify teams: Include individuals from various backgrounds in both the creative and decision-making processes. 

4. Co-develop content: Collaborate with communities to create messaging, visuals, and narratives that reflect their lived realities. 

5. Test and refine: Pilot campaign materials with focus groups or advisory panels from the intended audience and use their feedback to make improvements. 

6. Evaluate impact: Monitor the campaign’s effectiveness across different groups and make adjustments to address disparities in engagement or outcomes. 

Conclusion

Culturally competent communication centres on accountability rather than solely improved messaging. It acknowledges that communication influences access, trust, and outcomes. Ineffective communication design can perpetuate exclusion as readily as it can mitigate it.

For people navigating multiple intersections, the question is not just whether they are included, but also whether they are understood, recognised, and accurately reflected. Culturally competent communication requires practitioners and systems to do more than just communicate clearly. We must also communicate responsibly, with awareness of power, context, and consequences. 

As you reflect on your own work, consider what specific actions you will take to integrate genuine cultural competency into your practices.

Whether you are shaping messages, designing campaigns, or working with diverse communities, your commitment can help close the gap between intention and impact. Let’s challenge assumptions and design communication that truly resonates. By doing this, we can help create more equitable and inclusive systems where everyone feels seen,  understood, and valued. 

“Au TAF” (work to do)  

Taofique Folarin (he/him) is a public health practitioner, multidisciplinary artist, and community advocate working at the intersection of LGBTQ+ health, psychology, and creativity. He is the HIV Prevention Coordinator and Digital Engagement Lead at Spectra, where he leads culturally competent digital engagement and communications. He holds an MSc in Psychology (BPS GBC), sits on the UK-CAB steering group, contributing to national HIV prevention policy and guidance, and is the founder of TAF Collective, a public health and creative platform serving racialised and marginalised LGBTQ+ communities through culturally aware engagement and inclusive messaging.

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