Call for creative proposals
SUMMARY
The SCAMP project is looking for creative(s) with workshop design experience to produce a group activity for young people (16–19-year-olds) to express and unpick their experiences of COVID-19 through creative mediums. Opportunity to contribute to important and innovative research.
CONTEXT
We have been collecting survey data from young people (our cohort) for the past 5 years including about their mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic. We want to use creative methods/workshops/activities to understand more in-depth about our cohort’s experiences over lockdown in a more “qualitative” way.
We have carried out some workshops with our Young Persons Advisory Group where we have identified some areas they believed were core to young people’s COVID experience, especially in relation to their mental health. Ideally the activities would focus on unlocking experiences around these.
They include:
• emotions and mental health,
• school,
• routine and pastimes,
• positive aspects,
• relationships,
• theme of change (including at certain times of change e.g. in and out of lockdown, and general learnings and reflections from whole period).
We have also identified with young people activities which they would find engaging and effective, and we are keen to see some of these addressed in the workshops:
• creating music or playlists,
• writing poetry/lyrics,
• creating a mood board or collage of feelings,
• a storyboard of their daily routines or COVID narrative,
• mapping their house and how they would spend a typical day in it,
• depicting daily cycles including sleep.
Alongside the workshops where we identified the above areas, we have also co-designed interview questions. The creative workshops/activities will therefore be used to compliment/feed into interviews. The designed activity will provide a starting place to unlock meaningful conversations of our participant’s lived experiences of their lockdown.
We will be analysing the outputs of workshops in addition to the interviews and will work with you to explore how we can do that on the basis of your proposal. E.g. poems may be analysed thematically.
We are also keen for the outputs to be able to be used in any publications we produce from this research to demonstrate the activities that have taken place, but their quality is secondary to them being used as an exploratory tool, so they do not need to be polished pieces (it is more important they are effective as conversation starters and as tools to explore and express COVID-19 experiences).
We intend for the creative workshops to happen in a group setting, and the interviews to be 1:1. The latter will provide a space for information to be discussed that participants may not necessarily want to share in front of others.
THE PROJECT
Objectives:
• Understand the differences in experience between young people who found the pandemic difficult and those who showed resilience.
• Produce creative outputs for analysis
• Act as a creative starting point to lead into interviews and unlock discussion about experiences during COVID
• Produce outputs to be used in publications*
*This is only to example what has been done, the workshop does not need to be designed such they are polished or high quality by the end of it.
ARTIST BRIEF & PROPOSED ACTIVITIES
• Design a 40 – 60min workshop to be repeated in around 6 sessions*
• This workshop should function as a way of collecting data- the outputs will be taken away by the research team to analyse for themes and help us understand what this time was like for young people
• We are particularly interested in proposals which involve 2+ activities across multiple mediums, and which address the core areas and activities scoped by young people as of interest already (see ‘context’)
• Facilitate around 6 workshops for 5-10 participants
• Potentially contribute a small amount of time guiding researchers in analysis of workshop outputs, depending on their medium (to be discussed).
• Work with our Young People’s Advisory Group to finalise workshop design
• Workshop is preferably virtual but can be in person if a good case is made for this being necessary
*We are happy to accept applications from creatives who feel comfortable in just one medium and can pair you with another creative to compliment. In this case you will need to propose a session of 20-30 minutes instead and a scaled budget.
BUDGET AND TIMELINE
Total Budget: £1000-£1750 (for workshop design and facilitating activity 6 times)/
Budget for a session to cover both creative mediums (6 x 40-60min sessions): £1,000- £1,750
Budget for a session to cover a single creative medium to be paired with another creative (6 x 20-30 min sessions) £500-£875
Delivery Period:
• July: Planning
• July /August: Workshops take place
• September onwards: possible consultation around analysis of outputs and engagement
TO APPLY:
Please submit:
• A proposal
• A CV /portfolio of relevant experience
• Budget breakdown
to scamp@imperial.ac.uk by 23.59 on the 11th July
Please note you must have a DBS check to facilitate workshops. For more information, or for an informal discussion and further details about the preliminary co-creation workshops we have already run, please contact scamp@imperial.ac.uk.
