Under the theme of 'People and Places', this research project will focus on the mechanisms for effective exchange within the Creative Industries, linking in particular, academic research in the creative sector with creative professional practitioners who operate as solo artists and micro-business enterprises. Through a series of extended residencies located in disadvantaged communities across Northern Ireland, academic practitioners and postgraduates from the University of Ulster and Queen's University will work together with professional artists to explore ways in which contemporary digital and non-digital arts can have a transformative impact on liminal communities and districts. Areas of specific interest include art and public art in local communities, the role of art in a post-conflict society, and the role that art can play in regenerating a region such as Northern Ireland. A key outcome from this work will be the potential to share ideas, activities and experiences with other international contexts which are already looking to Northern Ireland as an example of a post-conflict region. The collaboration between Queen's and Ulster, established through a new Creative Exchange Lab (CEL),will enable projects in music, film, drama, creative writing, fine art, to be developed and delivered in communities across Northern Ireland. Each one will involve workshops, creative collaborative projects designed in association with the practitioners and conceived around local issues, histories and contexts. The outcomes of the residencies will be presented in a major festival and exhibition hosted across both institutions at the end of 2013 which will showcase the creative outcomes of both practitioners and community participants. Individual projects will later be presented in regional venues for local communities to experience and they will be archived and made available on-line. A longitudinal study running alongside the residencies will document and report on the creative practice landscape for lone artists and practitioners, creative clusters and networks, and the relationship of these activities to academic research. The study will be explored in a wider regional and national government context for the creative industries whereby funding and support is targeted at SMEs and 'close to market' activities and rarely identifying the needs of solo practitioners and and micro businesses. In addition to the study, the residencies will also lead to the generation of new knowledge and working methods about artist and academic engagement in specific communities which are often historically remote from both contemporary arts practice and academia. The breadth creative activities available through both institutions will ensure a wide spread of community projects across Northern Ireland. The public engagement aspect of these residencies will also be beneficial to the participating postgraduate students.

People with long-term mental health problems face profound social exclusion. They also die much younger than the general population from preventable causes. Despite a considerable body of research highlighting much higher rates of the main chronic and life-limiting diseases, later detection, and sub-optimal and fragmented care for people with severe mental illness (SMI), these inequalities appear stubbornly entrenched. Social exclusion for this population is characterised by an invisibility at policy and social levels and the challenges in meeting these complex needs with primary and secondary care services are immense. Using participatory approaches with stakeholders and experts by experience (stage 2), we identified the key challenges for implementation of social prescribing for people with SMI. These include: (1) diffusion of service responsibility and fragmentation of care; (2) limited (or absent) psychosocial support towards community engagement; (3) public and self-stigma leading to over-reliance on in-house (institutional) care; (4) policy confusion and neglect on SMI; (5) uneven distribution and ephemerality of community assets. Although social prescribing (SP) offers a potential solution by encouraging access to health-supporting amenities and resources and interagency collaboration, there is scant SP research for this population. The health and social care needs of this population require imaginative and nuanced models of health care that can accommodate their various and intersecting medical, social, and psychological needs while simultaneously influencing the environmental contexts in which they exist. The Challenging Health Outcomes/Integrating Care Environments (CHOICE) coalition has co-designed a delivery model which enhances interagency cooperation while providing more capacity at the community level to assess, appropriately prescribe, and provide flexible, sustained support to use a wide range of resources (assets, e.g., arts, leisure, and sports). In stage 3, Community Navigators based in our partner organisations will be trained in behaviour change techniques to encourage, guide and support people with SMI to use these resources. We will also extend the use of peer-support. This approach is intended to facilitate, incrementally, a virtuous cycle of improved self-esteem, self-efficacy, and social inclusion that enhances quality of life and wellbeing. Because research of this type has not been done before, our multi-disciplinary research team will undertake an adaptive mixed methods research programme to examine: (1) the outcomes of this approach; (2) the barriers and facilitators in implementing the CHIOCE model, such as the real-world issues of interagency cooperation and communication; (3) the needs and challenges of the voluntary and community partners; (4) the contextual and structural factors that might influence how the project works. Importantly, we will seek to gain a deeper understanding of CHOICE through our experts by experience who have a powerful and central role in the coalition and in the research process. Due to the embeddedness of all the key stakeholders in the CHOICE coalition, the findings will have a major impact on research, policy and practice in social prescribing, social inclusion, and health of people with SMI.

It is claimed that Art for Reconciliation (AfR) produces work that reflects, represents, or responds to multiple forms of political conflict in ways that encourage conflict transformation. This claim is reflected in international political and financial support for the growth in AfR. We question the validity of this claim - not because it is untrue, but because as noted in the AHRC Cultural Value report, "long-term evaluations of arts and cultural initiatives in post-conflict transformation have rarely if ever been attempted". Without such an 'attempt' we face a series of problems. Firstly, the various outcomes of AfR are not adequately understood. AfR can potentially replicate the divisions of conflict. Or, it can enable processes of healing, witness testimony and inter-community engagement. It can be transformational and stimulate positive relational change between communities in conflict. If we do not research these differing forms and outcomes then AfR will not possess the definitional robustness required to adequately understand how positive reconciliatory outcomes can be realized. Secondly, we do not possess proper evaluative forms which measure how AfR achieves a shift out of and away from conflict. Evaluations are often tied to audience reaction as opposed to more in-depth and grounded techniques that measure positive relational change between communities in conflict. Thirdly, we do not know how funding practice, community response and the management and production of art affect the landscape of AfR. Fourthly, without robust techniques and grounded research the value of AfR cannot be adequately disseminated. Finally, when we locate art as conflict transformation it is generally non-transferrable. Better knowledge production concerning AfR will aid wider dissemination. In solving these problems we will develop a co-produced research project that grounds its methods in interaction with funders, policy makers, arts managers, artists and communities engaging in AfR. Through a focused study of funded AfR our research project aims to: 1. Determine if AfR initiatives do, or possibly could, affect meaningful conflict transformation; 2. Share evidence regarding art as conflict response beyond the arts community and communicate its value to those who are currently unaware; 3. Develop ways in which transformative AfR can be achieved through better evaluation, auditing and articulation; 4. Create an evaluation mechanism that promotes deeper understanding of what is actually taking place within AfR to all sectors involved in designing and delivering this work; 5. Develop a dissemination strategy to share information about creative arts engagements and interactions which respond to conflict and aim for meaningful reconciliation; 6. Contribute to effective knowledge that highlights the value of art as a facilitator of conflict transformation. Knowledge transfer is important not only to develop social science and arts/humanities engagement, but to develop and show how art may play a role in broader conflict transformation processes. Current frameworks, typologies and methodologies, both in academia and amongst communities of practice (i.e. funders, policymakers, artists and arts managers, and community support professionals) do not always reflect or adequately evaluate transformative outcomes. Ultimately, we seek to address these aims in ways that can have direct, meaningful and purposeful impact on the work of funders, communities of practice and the public. The project will speak to how communities respond to conflict and work to better explain, understand and appreciate how their lived experiences of harm and injustice, inform that response. The dissemination strategy will be used by groups involved in different types of reconciliation projects to sustain and develop conflict transformation activity.