Playfulness is an innate human trait crucial for making sense of the world, creativity, development of social skills and positive emotions. It is a trait which is strongly encouraged in children and young people but increasingly is being squeezed out in adulthood amidst the pressures and technologies of contemporary western society. It is often viewed as 'juvenile' and 'unproductive' use of time. Yet playfulness is celebrated in different forms within some arenas - particuarly the creative arts and sport - where the act of play is viewed as offering positive health and well-being benefits, actively encouraged as part of community cohesion agendas and providing spaces for creativity and entrepreneurial thinking. By engaging actively with these the arenas of creative arts & culture and sport, and drawing on the experiences and practices which encourage and celebrate playfulness, the proposed research will seek, firstly to characterise attributes of playfulness and, secondly to identify new research questions concerning ways in which it might be fostered in adults in order to promote flourishing, resilience, creativity and therefore enhance wellbeing for both individuals and communities. It will thus also explore how playfulness can help to reconnect people and communities, assisting to overcome conflict and dissonance but reducing isolation, stress, and alienation.

The most cost-effective way to tackle the root causes of many social and educational problems is to intervene early in children's lives, before the problems have had a chance to entrench. Key to this strategy is improving children's language development in the early years. Children who enter school with good language skills have better chances in school, better chances of entering higher education, and better economic success in adulthood. Reading is very effective at boosting children's language. Children who read regularly with their parents or carers tend to learn language faster, enter school with a larger vocabulary of words and become more successful readers in school. Because of this, local authorities often commission services to promote family-based shared book reading (e.g. the Bookstart programme). However, recent studies suggest that shared book reading interventions work less effectively for children from disadvantaged backgrounds than originally thought, particularly when their parents have lower levels of education. This means that there is a danger that the benefits of shared reading will be restricted to children from more affluent homes and not get through to those who need them most. To solve this problem, we need to develop a better understanding of how reading interventions work, and of how parents use them. We need to identify what parents do and say when reading aloud with their children and why this makes reading so effective at boosting children's language. We need to find out whether differences in how parents read mean that parents from disadvantaged backgrounds use these language boosting behaviours less frequently. We need to determine how to design interventions that increase the use of these behaviours in all parents, especially those with lower levels of education. Then, once we have identified how reading interventions work, we need to determine how to help parents use them successfully in their daily lives. The aim of this project is to determine how shared reading promotes child language development, and use this knowledge to make it an effective language boosting tool for children from all social and economic backgrounds. In Work Package 1, we will identify what language boosting behaviours parents use in shared reading, and will determine how parents from different social/economic backgrounds use these behaviours during shared reading. In Work Package 2, we will create four targeted interventions, each focussed on a particular language boosting behavior, and investigate how they are implemented by parents from different backgrounds, and how they affect children's language development. In Work Package 3, we will explore what influences parents' decisions to read or not to read with their children, in order to work out why parents may be unwilling to read with their children and to identify how to make reading a more enjoyable experience. We will also evaluate the benefits of a new intervention, designed by national charity The Reader Organisation, to promote reading for pleasure. Across the project, we will study a range of language skills, covering the core language abilities that are essential for learning to read and write in school. We will produce one review article, 9 original research articles, 30 conference presentations, and activities for non-academic audiences at local and national level. We will also submit a Cochrane review on the effectiveness of shared reading interventions for language development. Our results will enable health professionals such as health visitors, early years educators such as nursery school teachers, and policy-makers in local and national government to design targeted, cost-effective interventions to improve the language of children between the ages of 0 and 5 years. The work addresses ESRC's strategic priorities Influencing Behaviour & Informing Interventions and A Vibrant & Fair Society.

The AHRC's track record of innovation in relation to the role of Arts and Humanities in fostering mental health and wellbeing, nationally and internationally, is proven in the range and diversity of mental health-related themes and calls, including the Cultural Value Project, Connected Communities and the AHRC's contribution via GCRF-funded projects to the Global Mental Health agenda, which has principally been concerned with addressing inequities in mental health provision across the globe. Thanks in large part to the AHRC's leadership, the national case for the value of Arts and Humanities in enhancing mental health has now been effectively made, and the role of culture and the creative arts is firmly acknowledged in UKRI's cross-disciplinary agenda for mental health. Of the five cross-cutting themes identified in UKRI's mental health strategy, the first is 'effective intervention', enabling 'inclusive participation' and 'transferability, sustainability, scalability'. The key and pressing challenge now is to ensure a robust, evidence-based and research-informed approach that will enable Arts and Humanities research-based activities to be accessible to those who are experiencing them across the globe This project rises to that challenge by establishing an international network to explore which Arts and Humanities research-based activities are working for whom (when, why and where) and what is evidenced best practice for embedding Arts and Humanities research in mental health provision in different socio-cultural contexts. Led by an interdisciplinary Arts and Humanities team (English Literature/Intercultural Education/Applied Linguistics) specialising in high-impact Arts/Humanities research-based mental health provision, and drawing on expertise in Psychology. Health Sciences and Modern Languages and Cultures, as well as working in collaboration with external health partners and arts organisations, the project will focus on the successful implementation and embedding of Arts and Humanities research in the promotion of mental health and wellbeing, nationally and internationally. With a specific focus on equality and inclusion, and the special part Arts and Humanities research-based initiatives in Mental Health and Wellbeing have to play in overcoming health inequities and exclusions globally, the network is motivated by a 'trans-knowledging' agenda. Research evidence shows that high income countries have valuable lessons to learn from low-income ones, especially in embracing pluralism in respect of approaches to mental health and wellbeing. Three focused workshops - (i) strategic partnerships between Arts and Health providers (ii) inclusive practices in mental health care and (iii) alignment with existing community capacities - will bring together state-of-the-art knowledge and expertise with ongoing successful models of Arts and Humanities-based research in mental health from across the world. Building on the exceptionally strong track record in two UK cities (Liverpool and Glasgow) of innovative collaboration between arts and health, as well as on the interdisciplinary research team's experience of working locally and (inter)nationally on Arts/Humanities research for mental health, the series will emphasise: co-creating with stakeholders means for embedding research-based change; promoting joined-up planning of successful projects nationally and internationally; identifying what needs to be done in differentiating the benefits to mental health of distinct Arts/Humanities activities in different socio-cultural contexts. The short-term objective of this network is to establish what has already worked and what lessons can be learnt for the immediate priorities in the aftermath of Covid-19. The long-term objective is to position Arts and Humanities at the forefront of an inclusive vision of mental health provision and the AHRC in the vanguard of addressing the national and global mental health challenge in the future.

This project will investigate the value to individual and community of the BIG Lottery-funded Volunteer Reader Scheme, which has been developed by award-winning charitable social enterprise, The Reader Organisation (TRO), as part of its pioneering outreach project, Get into Reading (GIR). TRO's mission is to create environments where personal responses to books are freely shared in reading communities in every area of life. The GIR model is based on small groups (2-12 people), reading aloud together short stories, novels and poetry. GIR is distinguished from conventional reading groups by its shared-reading method: the literature exists live and performatively in the room; regular breaks in the reading encourage participants to reflect on what is being read, and weigh its language and meaning, often in implicit or explicit relation to their own life-experience, while readers always control their own involvement, contributing as much or as little as they choose. GIR currently delivers over 360 groups, in health and social care settings (community centres, libraries, homeless shelters, schools, hospitals, offices, doctors' surgeries, prisons, drug rehab units and care homes) across the UK. The related Volunteer Reader Scheme engages 70 people at risk of, or suffering from, mental health difficulties, isolation or unemployment in a range of volunteering opportunities at all levels of TRO. Volunteer roles operate at the heart of organisation's reading mission and whilst often still being members of reading groups, volunteers are further involved as: Office Assistants, preparing reading resources for reading groups; Reading Group Assistants, working alongside reading group facilitators: Reading Friends, reading weekly, one-to-one, with isolated older people; Reading Group Facilitators, running weekly reading groups in Residential Care Homes or with the elderly. Volunteers are fully trained and supported by TRO staff, receiving regular feedback and recognition of their achievements and are offered potential for role development: reading-group members may become volunteers; volunteers may become interns or apprentices; apprentices may become employees. This study will build on the existing collaboration between The Centre for Research into Reading, Information and Linguistic Systems (CRILS) at the University of Liverpool, and its third sector partner, TRO, to develop innovative, interdisciplinary literary and social scientific methodologies for capturing multi-dimensional components of the reading experience. In two separate yet related and concurrent studies, the research will seek (1) to identify the unique value of shared reading as it is actually experienced by the volunteers, as a representative section of vulnerable and needy individuals, as well as examining the relationship of this intrinsic value to collateral benefits. Through comparison of a GIR group with a built environment discussion group, via analysis of transcribed audio-recordings, this study will test the hypothesis that serious literature has power to create both individual meaningfulness and a strongly interactive small community; (2) to test the efficacy of the movement from, and inter-relation between, reading group-membership and future facilitation of reading groups, by comparing the experience of volunteers as continuing group-members and as developing group-helpers, gaining increased master. Dynamic and diverse volunteer case studies will be compiled, via interviews, observations, questionnaires, and these will be cross-referenced with routine audit data, to establish the connection between intrinsic literary affect and individual mental health and community well-being. This study will also consider how TRO's recent acquisition of an International Reading and Wellbeing centre, Calderstones Park Mansion House, may serve as a future Merseyside hub to create a larger community of volunteers engaged in reader and other-related activities.

This study will assess the impact on mental health of restricted access to arts and culture in a specific city region, and track, enable and enhance the value of innovation in arts provision in mitigating associated harms. Liverpool has one of the richest concentrations of culture in the UK, boasting the largest clustering of museums and galleries outside London. Cultural capital is critical to the city region's economy, contributing c10% (Culture Liverpool,2019). The city also has a pioneering history of harnessing arts for mental health care through partnerships between culture and health providers. Building on the University of Liverpool's strong alliance with organisations across these sectors, this project brings together an interdisciplinary team of arts and mental health researchers to devise and conduct, in consultation with cultural and health bodies, two surveys. Survey 1 (online interviews) will target 20 arts organisations (10 civic institutions, 10 community arts programmes, representing 'elite' and 'popular' arts) to capture (i)the impact of COVID-19 on public access to arts provision (including those who usually access the arts through formal healthcare routes) and on audience/beneficiary change over time (legacy losses and potential gains) (ii)the success of alternative (e.g. online/digital) modes of provision by arts organisations in reaching and communicating with established and/or new audiences. Survey 2 (online questionnaire and supplementary online/telephone interviews) will target c300 arts' audiences/beneficiaries to capture (i)the impact on mental health of restricted/non-existent access to usual provision (ii)the perceived value and accessibility of alternative arts provision and the latter's impact on mental health/wellbeing.