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Primary school curricula often largely avoid the climate crisis, and teachers feel ill-equipped to teach it. In the secondary school curriculum, the climate crisis is generally addressed only in specific subjects such as science or geography. Our own and others’ research indicates that children are curious about climate change and become less anxious when they feel agentic in facing its effects. The challenges of everyday life for children in parts of the world severely affected by the rapidly changing climate are seldom included in educational contexts. This article reports on a project that linked a school in a UK town with a school on a Fijian island to explore a holistic approach to understanding the impacts of climate change. The children aged 9 to 11 built friendships across the globe through film messages, email, written letters, and drawings. As part of getting to know one another, the children asked and answered questions about their lives. Those questions and other creative activities revealed children’s interests and priorities and the extent of their local and global knowledge and enabled us to consider a personalised approach to climate justice. By co-creating and exchanging their stories the children could begin to understand the social and emotional impacts as well as the science of climate change. We discuss the role of empathy in children’s learning about climate change, and consider how connections across international divides can be facilitated.

When outdoor arts-based research activities were put on hold due to the pandemic in 2020–2021, a shift to online workshops became a serious consideration. But this shift required some substantial rethinking. The original plans for our UKRI project entitled Connecting disadvantaged young people with landscape through arts involved groups of children and young people in outdoor settings working with artists to co-create sculptures, artwork, music, poems, and stories. Our aim was to bring children and young people into areas of nature relatively close to their homes, which they may not have previously visited, and to help them connect with the landscape through these various artistic practices. The workshops we had intended to conduct would have been in groups, outdoors in areas of nature, with physical contact between participants. The pandemic, which prevented normal activities from continuing, highlighted the limited realities of many young people’s lives, further diminishing the activities available to them. This realization meant that we should not pause our research but find new ways of continuing it. So, we paired up with a charity that worked with children in need and their families. Through the charity, we could access some children whom the charity workers thought would benefit from art-based activities. The artist, who had been commissioned originally to do outdoor arts workshops, was willing to try a new approach using the online platforms that the charity already used to communicate with the children. There were challenges and highlights, providing some insight into fundamental similarities and differences between face-to-face and online research with children.

Rewriting the Future has been undertaken in three phases from 2018 to the end of 2021. This report details the work carried out in 2020-2021, which has built upon the research conducted previously. The key aim of the earlier research was to enable young people to imagine alternative futures and thereby identify specific barriers and enablers for continued educational engagement. This led to a set of findings which in turn led to the development of interactive resources to explore educational experiences and future aspirations with further groups of marginalised young people. Data collection in all stages of Rewriting the Future has been a co-created process of working with young people to establish questions relevant to them in exploring educational aspirations, engagement and progression. This involves utilising participatory methods that enable young people to express their perspectives and ideas in ways which encourage identification of the issues, reflection and potential solutions. Participatory group activities allow the researchers to research ‘with’ rather than ‘on’ young people, and responses are recorded in different ways to produce rich data, allowing for the exploration of themes through different lenses. Analysis of data collected in Phase 3 led to the following themes: Perceptions of young people (by self and others); Relationships with others; Influential sources; Structural/contextual issues; and Knowledge and understanding. Significantly it is the nature and quality of children’s experiences of these factors which can affect whether they are barriers or enablers. Although our findings have been broadly categorised under a series of headings, a substantial finding is how interconnected the various themes are, and how a holistic approach is required when working with children and young people to discuss their futures. Whereas school students we worked with often thought first of qualifications and grades when considering university, our methods began

This study focussed on identifying the key concerns and information needs of young people with Adolescent Idiopathic Scoliosis (AIS) and their parents and examined what resources might help improve young people’s ‘participativeness’ and health literacy during clinic consultations. A qualitative participatory design underpinned the study. Workshops involving multiple methods were used to engage with young people with AIS and their parents, who were recruited through a regional children’s hospital. The study design was informed by patient and public consultation with eight young people and two parents. 10 young people (aged 14–16 years) and 11 of their parents participated in the study. Young people and their parents reported uncertainty and anxiety before coming to clinic and faced issues participating in the consultation, being involved in decision-making and understanding the information and language. These challenges resulted in unmet information needs. Young people’s health literacy relating to an AIS diagnosis and treatment is facilitated by them being prepared and informed before coming to clinic and be actively supported to be involved during the consultation. We collaboratively developed the ‘Coming to Spinal Clinic’ resource to help young people with AIS and parents prepare for and get the most out of their visit.

This is the fourth phase of Rewriting the Future, a project funded by FutureU. The overarching aim is to understand specific barriers and enablers to continued educational engagement towards higher education, for marginalised groups. This report considers adult learners aged 20 plus, returning to education to study at level 3 and on access to higher education courses. The research was undertaken in 2022. Adult learners have historically been an underrepresented group in government policy. The focus has been on Widening Participation (WP) students in general. WP students are often described as ‘non-traditional’ students, including students from disadvantaged backgrounds, part-time undergraduate students, first-generation students, ethnic minority students, refugees and asylum seekers, students from low-income backgrounds, care-leavers, vocational and work-based learners and disabled learners, who may also be mature learners. Previously available research suggests that lack of confidence and standard qualification routes may be barriers even though adult learners bring many transferable skills to education and yet the predominant focus in policy has been to prioritise the financial support essential for WP students to participate in post-compulsory education. Rewriting the Future focuses instead on multi-contextual barriers and enablers to engagement.

In more recent years in geographical research there has been a trend towards ‘child-friendly’ or ‘young people-friendly’ research methods, often involving creativity and participation. Meanwhile, traditional methods such as interviews and focus groups continue to dominate research with adult participants. This paper draws and reflects on fieldnotes documented during a study which used participatory design workshops with activity-based methods to contemporaneously, but separately, engage with young people with Adolescent Idiopathic Scoliosis (AIS) and their parents. This paper contributes to the body of literature concerned with intergenerational practice in children’s geographies and geographical work more broadly. It does so not by focusing on intergenerational perspectives of the research topic, but by teasing out intergenerational engagement in research that used the same methods across generations (with young people and their parents). Finding that the activities were engaged with in a similar depth and commitment by participants, we argue for a loosening of the artificial packaging of young people-friendly and adult oriented methods.

Using data from participatory story-telling research with 65 young people this paper provides a co-created theoretical grounding for radical social work with children and young people. The problems and solutions social work should be seeking are explored in the light of resilience theories and the Capability Approach. The young people’s perspectives echo but extend existing resilience interventions and definitions of Capability Approach, highlighting structural and historical patterns of inequality. They call for a collective response to adverse experiences, which become obvious in one zone of experience but have consequences and roots in other places. Social work could usefully employ expanded understandings of socio-ecological resilience and the Capability Approach (CA) to focus interventions more clearly on the root causes of adversities and shape interventions which highlight capability sustainability and co-created solutions. This would involve professionals working alongside children and young people, their families and allies, to confront enduring patterns of disadvantage.

Working in a participatory research project with young people who are disabled, care-experienced or otherwise disadvantaged, collaborative fiction writing was a core method of hearing and amplifying their voices. We discuss how meanings were made in this iterative process of capturing resonances in the different stages of the research, resulting in the creation of stories filtered through many different participants. Through individual and joint reflections on the complex processes of constructing the 48 short stories, we demonstrate how collective story-telling can address criticisms of fictional research outputs as (in)valid social science, and argue instead that the resulting stories can be considered rigorous and faithful research findings. We suggest that these research outputs preserve and proliferate the meanings of marginalised young people, and challenge the absence or distortion of existing narratives about their lives as experienced by themselves.

Satchwell explores the uses of a set of fictionalised short stories produced in a participatory research project with disadvantaged children and young people. The stories represent challenges and issues as expressed by young people themselves, such as bullying, family break-up, domestic violence, living with autism, and were constructed in complex collaborative ways which arguably increase their resonance and relevance for others. This chapter discusses evaluation of the stories with a range of professionals and students, who have considered them as resources for working with young people who face similar problems. Satchwell includes both positive and negative reactions to the stories, raising questions of reception and intention, realism and safety, and the affordances of fiction in working with young people as both creators and audiences.

A UK Research Council-funded research project involving story-making by, with and for disadvantaged young people in the community became an opportunity to engage students. At each stage of the project, from getting to know the young people through to turning their stories into fictionalised animations and narrated videos, students participated, adding their own individual interests, passions and expertise. In the process, the project touched on a range of initiatives and values espoused by the wider university. Reflections from students, tutors and the community members with whom they worked, present an evaluation of the experience from their perspectives. The article provides testament from those directly involved to examine in detail the value of the process and the product of their engagement, thereby shedding light on its purpose. From there I will suggest how such work can be moved forward in ways that are meaningful for the participants themselves, while also fulfilling some of the requirements of universities today.

The process of communication between author and reader is a critical issue in examining any text. When considering the communication of ideas from young people whose voices are seldom heard, the journey from author to audience has particular significance. The construction of children and young people as ‘authors’ is important, especially for those with learning difficulties or who struggle to comply with the current emphasis on spelling, punctuation and grammar. This article relates to a UK Research-Council-funded three-year collaborative research project involving the co-creation of fictional stories with young people with disabilities to represent aspects of their lives. Drawing on frameworks from narratology, I analyse the co-creation of one of the stories, and present an interpretation and elaboration of the discourse structure of narrative fiction to illustrate the complexities of the relationship between the multi-faceted ‘author’ and community ‘reader’ of these stories. The combination of qualitative research and fictional prose has particular characteristics and implications for the dissemination and communication of research findings; while extending feminist critique of Barthes’ claim for the death of the author provides new insights for engaging children in writing with their own voice.

The combination of academic article and the fictional story it contains represents an attempt to convey our combination of qualitative participatory research and collaborative creative writing, as used in a project with a group of young people with disabilities. Through our story involving the fictional character Jasper, we have tried to distil some of the essence of his real-life inspiration, Peter, a young man with autism. At the same time, we recognise the impossibility of ‘pinning down’ any character as a representation of any psychological condition. By questioning the boundaries between science and art, and by considering alternative ways of creating ‘research reports’, we present the story as an alternative reading of autism. We suggest that the value of fiction in this context is that it allows a reframing of ‘problems’ while presenting readers with an accessible means of connecting with others across disciplinary, methodological and social divides.

The Joint Research Day between Uclan and ELHT took place on the 27th of November, at Victoria Mills, Burnley. The event brought together researchers and clinicians to showcase recent research, share new ideas about clinical problems that need tackling and seek collaborative interest between ELHT and UCLan staff. Uclan researchers from various academic/ research disciplines such as engineering, computer science, psychology, and health participated. The event was an opportunity to: • Hear about current local research projects, • Get involved in planned research, • Develop research ideas, • Develop collaborative partnerships. The program included • Keynote lectures by Professor St John Crean, Pro Vice Chancellor, Uclan (the second keynote speaker to be announced), • Presentations and posters of local studies. • Workshops.

The core assumption of this book is the interconnectedness of humans and nature, and that the future of the planet depends on humans’ recognition and care for this interconnectedness. This comprehensive resource supports the work of pre-service and practicing elementary teachers as they teach their students to be part of the world as engaged citizens, advocates for social and ecological justice. Challenging readers to more explicitly address current environmental issues with students in their classrooms, the book presents a diverse set of topics from a variety of perspectives. Its broad social/cultural perspective emphasizes that social and ecological justice are interrelated. Coverage includes descriptions of environmental education pedagogies such as nature-based experiences and place-based studies; peace-education practices; children doing environmental activism; and teachers supporting children emotionally in times of climate disruption and tumult. The pedagogies described invite student engagement and action in the public sphere. Children are represented as ‘agents of change’ engaged in social and environmental issues and problems through their actions both local and global.

This article reports on an ethnographic study of the UK’s largest health advocacy organisation dedicated to pregnancy, childbirth and parenting, the National Childbirth Trust or NCT. Working from interview data, textual materials and fieldnotes, we articulate three key phases in the NCT’s historically shifting relationships to feminism, medicine, the state and neoliberal capitalism. The concept of folded cause regimes is introduced as we examine how these phases represent the hybridisation of the organisation’s original cause. We argue that for the NCT the resulting multiplicity of cause regimes poses significant challenges, but also future opportunities. The apparent contradictions between cause regimes offer important insights into contemporary debates in the sociology of health and illness and raises critical questions about the hybrid state of health advocacy today. Focussing on cause allows for a deeper understanding of the intense pressures of diversification, marketisation and the professionalization of dissent faced by third sector organisations under current social and economic conditions.