Research
The Creative Arts Festival is part of a broader research effort to understand how young people experience and recover from crises.
The After The End Project
After The End is a research project about what happens once a crisis is over — after the emergency response ends, the reporting stops, and attention moves elsewhere. It asks how young people recover, what they carry with them, and what they need in order to build the lives they want.
The Creative Arts Festival is the creative strand of that research. Instead of asking young people to answer a questionnaire about their lives, it invites them to answer in their own forms — poetry, drama, visual and digital art, music, dance and fashion.
Every submission is treated as evidence. Taken together, the works build a picture of wellbeing, resilience and opportunity that numbers alone cannot show, and that picture is carried into the National Evidence Summit where it can be seen by the people making decisions.
Youth-Led Evidence
Young people aged 11–24 speak for themselves, in the form they choose, rather than being spoken about.
Creative Methods
Poetry, drama, visual and digital art, music, dance and fashion are all treated as valid ways of recording lived experience.
Evidence Into Policy
Selected works travel to the National Evidence Summit, putting youth voices in the same room as government, NGOs and universities.
Guiding Questions
Themes for Creative Submissions
Participants are encouraged to respond to themes around their experiences after crises. Creative works may explore questions such as:
1.
What has changed in your community since the crisis, and what has stayed the same?
2.
What helped you cope, and who was there for you?
3.
What do you wish adults and decision-makers understood about young people’s lives?
4.
What does wellbeing look like for you, day to day?
5.
What kind of future do you want to build, and what would it take to get there?