Our co-researchers and community artists will work together to co-design and deliver a series of workshops between January – July 2025 in Blackpool and Weston-super-Mare with more to follow later on in 2025 in Hastings. The workshops will take place with small groups of approximately 8 participants with lived experience in each of our health related areas of study ( young people,  people with experience of bereavement and people with experience of substance use and recovery). The artists have a range of creative methods at their disposal to respond flexibly to the workshop participants’ creative preferences. The artists and co-researchers will carefully design the workshops together so the best creative methods are chosen to  answer our research questions. If the workshop participants would like to use a creative method outside an artist’s area of expertise, a ‘guest’ artist may be recruited to co-facilitate.

Each workshop will focus on our research questions.

• What community assets are those living with bereavement/substance use & recovery/ mental health and wellbeing aware of that might support them, or what community assets have they used and found supportive?
• What barriers have these communities experienced in accessing community assets?
• What would help improve access to community assets or fill gaps in what is missing?

At the final workshop, participants will reflect on the process and the outputs created together and then individually. Each member will be invited to tell the story in words of what they have created visually, through a piece of writing or by taking part in an interview.

Finally the artists, co-researchers and workshop participants will be invited to co-design an exhibition of the work produced which will form part of one of our creative engagement events.