Children and young people (CYP) are experiencing a significant mental health (MH) crisis that is threatening their future. Deeply rooted health inequalities perpetuate this crisis and call for immediate action. This project will promote easy access to best practice in local arts activities that support the diverse MH needs of CYP and thus enable them to take better control of their lives. By supporting the MH of CYP the project will meet an important NHS priority contributing towards tackling the health inequalities affecting their lives. We will build on successes from Arts for the Blues (AH/W007983/1), a project that received funding from AHRC for phase one of this programme and successfully scaled up the use of an evidence-based creative psychological intervention in the North West. We will also draw on a track-record of 25+ years of engaging CYP in arts activities, and on our extensive co-production experience. Co-creation will therefore become central to this work. We will focus on CYP aged 9-13, a group at significant risk of developing MH problems whilst transitioning from childhood to early adolescence. They will be encouraged to act as co-researchers developing skills they can use after the completion of the project, ensuring direct benefits. We expect that co-creation will lead to meaningful engagement of CYP with this study that aims to generate new, scalable evidence concerning: (A) how to access arts activities that best support the MH of CYP; (B) how to evaluate arts activities that meet the diverse MH needs of CYP; (C) how to maximise the benefit of arts activities for as many CYP as possible. We will create a digital platform where evidence-based local arts activities will become easily accessible for CYP, their families, relevant organisations and services. We will do this by identifying good local arts practice that addresses the diverse MH needs of CYP, especially those who are often under-represented. Six CYP Creative Health Associates will be employed to work in areas with marked health inequalities and establish local collaborations between community partners and existing social prescribing link workers. They will also work with the research team to provide easy and sustainable access to arts activities and thus, bypass local barriers. The active involvement of Integrated Care Boards (ICBs) (e.g., Lancashire and South Cumbria and Cheshire and Mersey Care), medical leads and medical directors of CYP's MH, NHS trusts, schools and community organisations will encourage collaboration within and across systems, enabling the development of an agreed evaluation framework of best practice in arts activities. This will support streamlining access to therapeutic uses of the arts as well as scaling up and adopting the outputs from the study in the North West and beyond. Finally, we will develop and share the project outputs with our 46 non-academic national and international collaborators, making an active contribution towards tackling health inequalities that benefits the MH of CYP wherever they live.

Speaking directly to the grant scheme's theme on 'inter-generational communication, cultural transmission, and exchange', this exploratory research project seeks to critically examine the ways the First World War is taught via History and English Literature across secondary schools and universities in England. The ultimate aim of the project is to deepen our understanding of the link between education and the formation of contemporary memories of the war in the English context. It is about examining the war in its articulation in the present, to allow us to be in a position to make recommendations for the future. This cannot be achieved, however, until we find out what is actually happening in classrooms across England. There exists, in England, a specific national perception of the First World War. A tragic disaster, fought mainly in the muddied, rat-filled and lice-ridden trenches of the Western Front, by young, innocent 'Tommies', led by imbecile Generals who willfully sacrificed their men for a cause that would, with the outbreak of the Second World War, be proven to be utterly pointless. Overall, there is a general awareness that the war was a uniquely terrible experience. Where has this view come from? Popular cultural outputs such as Blackadder Goes Forth, Downton Abbey, Birdsong, Regeneration, and War Horse - to name a selection - reiterate and consolidate the above view. Academic commentators such as Stephen Badsey, Ian Beckett, Brian Bond, and Gary Sheffield argue that these programmes, novels, plays and films are popular because they echo the image of the war that has been taught in secondary level History and English Literature classes across the UK. However, until now, no serious study has been undertaken into the way the First World War is taught via the subjects of History and English Literature. Until this is rectified, and in a context that allows dialogue and interaction between academics and secondary school teachers, we cannot make assertions about the links between education and the way the war is understood in the 21st century. With its series of centenaries approaching, the First World War is likely to be of increased interest to teachers in secondary and tertiary education. It is therefore an opportune moment to begin research into the way the war is taught in schools and its role in the creation of a cultural memory of the war. If secondary education does contribute to a narrow and Anglo-centric understanding of the war - and is at a mismatch with some of the latest scholarship taught at university level - the centenary period provides a ripe opportunity for investigating capacity for change and making suggestions that consider the expertise, requirements and aims of teachers at secondary and tertiary level on equal terms. This exploratory project seeks to listen to teachers and academics about their experiences, needs and challenges in teaching the First World War in two stages. Firstly, in the half-term break of February 2013, a symposium will be hosted in London where teachers and academics will come together to discuss and compare the ways the First World War is taught via the subjects of History and English Literature. The aim is to create a positive and fruitful atmosphere to discuss ways of achieving greater continuity between the learning experiences of students who study the First World War at school and university, with lasting outcomes such as an interactive website to allow for teacher-academic dialogue into the future. Stage two will take the form of a questionnaire circulated in a two-tier methodology, online and in face-to-face interviews with focus groups made up of teachers and academics across the country. These two research stages will form the basis of a comprehensive report into the teaching practices in secondary schools and Higher Education and two peer-reviewed journal articles relating to cultural transmission of the First World War through education.

Thomas Nashe (1567-c.1601) is a challenging writer because of (1) the intense topicality and allusiveness of his works, which ground his writings in - and assume knowledge of - the material and socio-political contexts of his Elizabethan world; (2) his simultaneous tendency towards the grotesque, whereby he exaggerates and distorts the world he describes; and (3) his syntactical complexity. Using Nashe's Pierce Penniless (1592) as a focus text, the project will work with freelancers in the creative industries to produce nine pen-and-ink drawings, a zine, a devised performance, a video, and a series of six podcasts which will interpret Nashe's writings for non-specialist audiences and draw out his relevance to twenty-first-century experiences of precarious employment (here defined as unemployment, insecure employment, and employment in a job below one's skill-set). The project will also collect and curate oral testimonies about the employment experiences of young people and mature students in the twenty-first century. These visual and audio resources will be used to prompt discussions - amongst careers service professionals, educators, employers, young people and mature students facing a challenging employment environment, and their families and friends - about the experience of precarious employment, at both structured events (including a webinar hosted by the English Association) and beyond (via the subsequent life of these resources on-line). These resources will also highlight the dramatic techniques and potential of Nashe's 'non-dramatic' works, his innovative use of different forms and technologies (e.g. print), the importance of utilising networks, and Nashe's concern with the potential ephemerality of his art. In addition, via blogposts and an on-line round-table talk, the project will reflect on the process of collaborating with non-specialists to interpret and disseminate the works of a 'difficult' writer.

The Teaching and Learning War research network brings together EU and international researchers and stakeholders, from a range of academic disciplines and professional backgrounds, to explore young people's engagement with and receptivity to the cultural memory messages of the two world wars from an international comparative perspective. At the centenary of the First World War in the UK, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand young people find themselves 'front and centre' of both state-sponsored and community-level commemorations. As the two world wars fade from living memory, young people across the Commonwealth have been singled out as those who will be carrying the memory of the war forward. Early indications suggest similar emphasis will be placed on young people in the 80th and 90th anniversaries of the Second World War. It is at this juncture, as the commemorative focus in Britain and the Commonwealth shifts from the First to the Second World War, that new questions arise about 1) the ways these cataclysmic events are taught in the 21st century, 2) what cultural memory messages feature in education, and 3) how young people respond to and interpret these messages. While study of memory and war remembrance has intensified in recent years, the way young people engage with the cultural messages about these seminal historical events is largely unexplored. Interrogating the practices of teaching and learning about war remembrance has the potential to illuminate how memories of war are shaped. As Roediger and Wertsch identify, education is one of the 'core disciplines for a new field of memory studies' since 'many of the almost unconscious attitudes that students have about the past' are traceable to elements of 'the educational process'. The two world wars - as crucial moments of crisis where the 'British world' came together as a larger community of common interest - remain significant features of the curriculum, both formal and informal, in Britain, Australia, Canada and New Zealand. At the same time, they raise important questions about the teaching of the history of the British Empire, an area of heated contemporary debate across the Commonwealth. These four case studies share a narrative of white, imperial masculinity and sacrifice for Empire largely compatible with the rise of a sense of national identity, thus allowing for coherent enquiry. However, the distinctiveness (or otherwise) of these case studies needs to be held up against the experiences of indigenous peoples in these white settler colonies as well as the experience of non-white colonies in these conflicts such as Kenya, Jamaica or India. To enable us to develop a larger research project on this theme, networking events will centre on four main questions: 1. How do young people think about the past? 2. How have indigenous and/or ethnic minority histories been integrated into the representation and teaching of the two world wars? 3. What role does empathy play in the teaching of the two world wars? 4. How does youth-centered commemorative activity compare across the British world? This research network is distinctive because of the disciplinary boundaries it seeks to break down, particularly between history, memory studies, education and literary studies; its focus on the memory and representation of the two world wars from a comparative perspective; and because of the ways it will foster international collaboration and the development of strong links with overseas researchers and professional stakeholders, particularly in the education sector. It capitalises on and consolidates informal links between a number of existing networks including AHRC-funded projects; IWM; UCL IoE Centre for Holocaust Education; First World War Centenary Battlefield Tours Programme; British Empire at War Research Group; Centre for Research in Memory, Narrative and Histories; Youth Research Group; and Cultural Exchange in a Time of Global Conflict project.