Research into young people during the lockdown presented in Ty Pawb

Ty Pawb played host to the presentation of ‘Looking Beyond Lockdown: How UK arts organisations can continue to support young people’s wellbeing during covid-19’.

Far Apart but Close at Heart UK has worked alongside National Theatre Wales to coordinate the research into how engaging with art organisations and creative engagement has had a positive impact on young people’s mental health over the covid lockdown.

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Natasha Borton, the project coordinator for Far Apart but Close at Heart UK explained: “The idea of the research is to bring all of that data together so that we can influence policy but also arts organisations and organisations looking at young people and how we can improve young people’s mental health and wellbeing.”

The event told the story of six young people and their experience of lockdown, as well as their engagement with the arts and its impact.

Isabella Crowther, Joe Lucas, Joel Lima, Tom Mandane, Geraint Perry, and Ethan Gilbert all shared individual and differing experiences, from their favourite music to their lockdown “survival kits”.

The event was based on the research conducted by five organisations across the UK, with two of them, National Theatre Wales and Dirty Protest, working in Wales. The research is also conducted internationally.

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Natasha said: “This event is all about creativity in young people so the idea was that we present the research conclusions creatively so the idea was to talk to young people about their mental health and wellbeing and their experiences of lockdown so we ended up creating what I can only assume is some kind of theatrical cabaret.

“We co-created it with the young people, so it was fully their project and what they wanted to present.

 “We presented it to as many people as we could, so we have schools in there we had local councillors, members of the Wrexham council we also had people from young carers, people working with mental health, National Theatre Wales and also the People and Places project which the research study is based on.”

Looking Beyond Lockdown (image: Oliver Stephen)

Isabella Crowther began working on the project when she was asked to be a project ambassador.

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She explained: “I created some of the work and asked the right questions when they needed to be asked and I’m very thankful for Tash for allowing young people to have a leg up because not everyone does.

“She is very good at connecting people and people are having the right conversations so I’m just very thankful to be involved and it’s been a pleasure.

“It means that it’s great that people care about young people and how they experienced lockdown and that people do care about young people’s experiences and that that there is funding for young people to express their feelings through the arts, which is quite often underfunded.

“I don’t always feel that there will be this kind of research and I was skeptical but it’s great to know that it is going on and that people are talking about it and policymakers are talking about it."

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Natasha added: “It’s really important that this research takes place in Wrexham because so often I think research like this is focussed on large urban areas, and for it to take place somewhere where we know the area and the arts is chronically underfunded and potentially underappreciated.

“When we have young people who have to leave the region to get opportunities like this, the fact that it’s based in Wrexham, in Ty Pawb in the same year that we're going for City of Culture. All of these things have come together to prove how important it is to appreciate the arts geographically as well as age ranges.”