Zinc Arts: Promoting young people’s mental health and wellbeing through participation in the arts

Introduction Zinc Arts is a dynamic, leading arts and education charity that promotes inclusion through “arts without exception”. Zinc Arts runs a wide range of creative courses (including music, sculpture, drama, spray painting, stop-frame animation, film, and visual arts) and is underpinned by the ethos that the arts can be a very positive and powerful force in individual’s lives; awakening them creatively, inspiring future choices, providing a voice for self-expression, serving as a tool for learning, stimulating change, and resulting in a product which serves as an end in itself. ArtZone, a three-year arts programme run by Zinc Arts, involved working with young people aged 11-25 with or at risk of mental ill health through engaging them with a wide range of arts activities. The programme enabled Zinc Arts to deliver a mixture of six-to-ten week outreach projects to an array of organisations who work with young people in both secure and non-secure mental health services. Anglia Ruskin University was commissioned to provide a service evaluation of the ArtZone project from August 2012 to July 2015. Methods The evaluation comprised both quantitative and qualitative methods. The quantitative strand comprised 122 ArtZone participants (across years one to three) completing measures of mental illness severity and mental wellbeing pre/post course completion, and completing a measure of course satisfaction at the end of their course. The qualitative strand comprised focus groups and semi-structured interviews with 34 ArtZone participants during years one and two of the programme. Findings ArtZone participants significantly decreased in mental illness severity and significantly increased in mental wellbeing from pre- to post-intervention. Furthermore, participants were highly satisfied with their courses, with 99.1% rating the quality of their course as good or excellent, 96.5% indicating that the course met most or almost all of their needs, 98.3% being mostly satisfied or very satisfied with the amount of help they received and 99.1% being mostly satisfied or very satisfied with the course as a whole. Of particular importance 92.9% said that the course had helped them deal with their problems better. Furthermore, the qualitative findings revealed that the project led to a number of social and emotional benefits to participants, most notably: decreased social isolation and increased social inclusion (through an increased sense of community and connection, the development of peer support networks and friendships, increased communication and understanding); and increased mental wellbeing (through the provision of an emotional outlet, distraction, motivation, relaxation, increased self-confidence, and increased self-esteem). In addition, the qualitative strand revealed that the project sparked imagination and creativity in the participants, built new skills and competencies, and prompted thinking ahead and making future plans. Conclusion The present evaluation has found that the Zinc Arts ArtZone project has been hugely beneficial to its participants, and has achieved its aim of engaging young people with mental health problems in the arts, enabling them to use the arts to express themselves in a safe and secure setting. The findings also support Zinc Art’s ethos that the arts can be a very positive and powerful force in individual’s lives; awakening them creatively, inspiring future choices, providing a voice for self-expression, serving as a tool for learning, stimulating change, and resulting in a product which serves as an end in itself. The project has provided opportunities for over a hundred young people in both secure unit and community settings, and their engagement with and enjoyment of the project has been clearly evident. The evaluation has shown that the Zinc Arts ArtZone project has achieved important measurable outcomes, with statistically significant improvements in mental wellbeing and significant reductions in mental illness severity. Furthermore, the qualitative findings have revealed that the project has led to a number of social and emotional benefits to participants, having an impact at both an individual and community level. The evaluation results demonstrate the importance of sustaining the ArtZone programme, so that these benefits to young people with or at risk of mental ill health may continue. Further research exploring the longer-term benefits of the courses would be highly valuable

Young people's involvement in policy research

This article reviews the legacy of young people's involvement in policy research in the UK and proposes an approach of collaboration with young people that may be useful in other settings. It critiques the sociocultural and socioeconomic context relevant to young people's involvement in research, using the Young Researcher Network (YRN) as a case study. A key benefit of using the YRN has been the ability to identify and analyse potential barriers and facilitators influencing the relationships of young people and organisations whilst both groups worked together to improve policy. This allowed young people to connect to the policy environment in a meaningful way. The approach has been embedded into The Office for the Children's Commissioner in England, the National Institute for Health Research as well as other leading youth organisations in the UK, which is likely to increase the direct involvement of young people in policy research

A randomised controlled feasibility trial of intermittent theta burst stimulation with an open longer-term follow-up for young people with persistent anorexia nervosa (RaISE):Study protocol

OBJECTIVE: We present the protocol of a feasibility randomised controlled trial (RCT) of intermittent theta burst stimulation (iTBS) for young people with anorexia nervosa (AN). Effective first-line psychological therapies exist for young people with AN, but little is known about how to treat those who do not respond. Non-invasive neuromodulation, such as iTBS, could address unmet treatment needs by targeting neurocircuitry associated with the development and/or maintenance of AN.DESIGN: Sixty-six young people (aged 13-30 years) with persistent AN will be randomly allocated to receive 20 sessions of real or sham iTBS over the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in addition to their usual treatment. Outcomes will be measured at baseline, post-treatment (1-month post-randomisation) and 4-months post-randomisation (when unblinding will occur). Additional open follow-ups will be conducted at 12- and 24-months post-randomisation. The primary feasibility outcome is the proportion of participants retained in the study at 4-months. Secondary outcomes include AN symptomatology, other psychopathology, quality of life, service utilisation, neurocognitive processes, and neuroimaging measures.DISCUSSION: Findings will inform the development of a future large-scale RCT. They will also provide exploratory data on treatment efficacy, and neural and neurocognitive predictors and correlates of treatment response to iTBS in AN.</p

Collaborative research methods and best practice with children and young people: protocol for a mixed-method review of the health and social sciences literature

Introduction: Children and young people have the right to participate in research on matters that affect them, and their contribution improves research quality and insights from findings. Discrete participatory approaches are used across different disciplines. This review will provide a synthesis of existing literature from different disciplines by working with young people and adults experienced in participatory research to develop a broad definition of child and youth led research and to identify best practice. Methods and analysis: Comprehensive searches will be conducted in eight electronic databases (PsycINFO, Medline, CINAHL, Embase, SocINDEX, ASSIA: Applied Social Sciences Index and Abstracts (Proquest), Social Care Online and SCOPUS). Grey literature reports will also be sourced using Google searching. Eligible studies will be English-language primary studies and reviews on collaborative research with children and young people (aged 5–25 years) published from 2000 onwards. Qualitative and quantitative data will be integrated in a single qualitative synthesis following the JBI convergent integrated approach. Study quality will be assessed by developed checklists based on existing participation tools cocreated with the project steering group and co-creation activities with young people. Ethics and dissemination: Ethical approval is not required as no primary data will be collected. The review will develop guidance on best practice for collaborative research with children and young people, synthesising learnings from a wide variety of disciplines. Dissemination will be via peer-reviewed publications, presentations at academic conferences and lay summaries for various stakeholders. Opportunities for cocreation of outputs will be sought with the young researchers and the project steering committee. PROSPERO registration number: CRD42021246378

Peer research by children and young people and their allies Rapid Evidence Review of best practices in health and social science literature

The Youth Endowment Fund have set up a network for young people to do peer research about issues related to violence. They asked us to find out about how peer research has happened in the past with children and young people (aged 5-25 years). So, we met with a group of young researchers, university researchers and adults involved with the YEF network to talk about what peer research is and what questions we should be trying to answer. This report tells you about the answers we found so far. We built and explored a database of academic articles and reports from the last ten years. We will use this database to answer more questions– so let us know if you want to find out anything else! What peer research is being done, where it is happening and who is involved? Peer research involves children or young people taking the lead in some or all of the parts of a research project. It is happening across the world, in communities, schools and other places. Children and young people, working with adults, find out about health, education and community issues that they are interested in. Peer research about violence and the causes of violence has looked at things like racism, gender violence, bullying, and effects on health. What sorts of things happen as part of peer research? Peer research starts when children, young people or adults come up with an idea for something they want to find out about, or an opportunity they want to provide. It involves preparation and planning, connecting with other people, learning about research and the issues, deciding on topics and on different ways of investigating. Then children and young people, with adults, do things like interviews, group discussions, creative activities or surveys, and usually a combination of these. They explore the topic and analyse what they are finding out. The new things they have learned are used to plan, take action and are shared. During peer research people take time to think about what is going well and how to deal with any challenges. At the end they sometimes think about what has happened and how well it happened and people share feedback

“Pork pies and vindaloos”: learning for cosmopolitan citizenship

This paper examines Audrey Osler and Hugh Starkey’s 2003 article on cosmopolitan citizenship 14 years after its publication. Since its publication, young people’s disconnection from political life has increasingly become a cause for concern for most, if not all, Western democracies. Specifically, this article examines the implications for young people’s political life in Leicester following a period of local, regional and national political changes. The study has shown how some South Asian young people occupy “outsiders-within” status in Leicester’s “common culture” (and all the sub-cultures that exist within it) and see their ethnic communities from a range of voyeuristic positions. Young South Asian participants in the study have not distanced themselves from the South Asian community entirely, but the way participants have approached narrating their self-identities has not necessarily been forged in, or determined upon, how “Indian” or “Pakistani” identities are conceived by the common culture. Consequently, two questions arise. Firstly, what is the impact of developing cosmopolitan citizenship among young people forging new types of ethnic identities in Leicester? Secondly, what types of educational approaches (formal and informal) would be important to help strengthen young people’s political engagement? The paper concludes that the ongoing challenge for educators is to strengthen mutual understanding between students from different communities and backgrounds by drawing on their lived experience within the caveat of promoting cosmopolitan citizenship

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead

Shifting the limits in wheat research and breeding using a fully annotated reference genome

Introduction: Wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) is the most widely cultivated crop on Earth, contributing about a fifth of the total calories consumed by humans. Consequently, wheat yields and production affect the global economy, and failed harvests can lead to social unrest. Breeders continuously strive to develop improved varieties by fine-tuning genetically complex yield and end-use quality parameters while maintaining stable yields and adapting the crop to regionally specific biotic and abiotic stresses. Rationale: Breeding efforts are limited by insufficient knowledge and understanding of wheat biology and the molecular basis of central agronomic traits. To meet the demands of human population growth, there is an urgent need for wheat research and breeding to accelerate genetic gain as well as to increase and protect wheat yield and quality traits. In other plant and animal species, access to a fully annotated and ordered genome sequence, including regulatory sequences and genome-diversity information, has promoted the development of systematic and more time-efficient approaches for the selection and understanding of important traits. Wheat has lagged behind, primarily owing to the challenges of assembling a genome that is more than five times as large as the human genome, polyploid, and complex, containing more than 85% repetitive DNA. To provide a foundation for improvement through molecular breeding, in 2005, the International Wheat Genome Sequencing Consortium set out to deliver a high-quality annotated reference genome sequence of bread wheat. Results: An annotated reference sequence representing the hexaploid bread wheat genome in the form of 21 chromosome-like sequence assemblies has now been delivered, giving access to 107,891 high-confidence genes, including their genomic context of regulatory sequences. This assembly enabled the discovery of tissue- and developmental stage–related gene coexpression networks using a transcriptome atlas representing all stages of wheat development. The dynamics of change in complex gene families involved in environmental adaptation and end-use quality were revealed at subgenome resolution and contextualized to known agronomic single-gene or quantitative trait loci. Aspects of the future value of the annotated assembly for molecular breeding and research were exemplarily illustrated by resolving the genetic basis of a quantitative trait locus conferring resistance to abiotic stress and insect damage as well as by serving as the basis for genome editing of the flowering-time trait. Conclusion: This annotated reference sequence of wheat is a resource that can now drive disruptive innovation in wheat improvement, as this community resource establishes the foundation for accelerating wheat research and application through improved understanding of wheat biology and genomics-assisted breeding. Importantly, the bioinformatics capacity developed for model-organism genomes will facilitate a better understanding of the wheat genome as a result of the high-quality chromosome-based genome assembly. By necessity, breeders work with the genome at the whole chromosome level, as each new cross involves the modification of genome-wide gene networks that control the expression of complex traits such as yield. With the annotated and ordered reference genome sequence in place, researchers and breeders can now easily access sequence-level information to precisely define the necessary changes in the genomes for breeding programs. This will be realized through the implementation of new DNA marker platforms and targeted breeding technologies, including genome editing