Various indicators show that looked-after children need better support from care and education providers. National Audit Office statistics from 2014 show that 20% of young homeless people, 24% of the adult prison population, and 70% of sex workers have been in care. In 2013, only 6% of care leavers were in Higher Education compared to 30% of that age demographic nationally. In 2015, 33% of looked-after children had been 'placed' more than once in a year in a children's home or with a foster family, and 10% had three placements or more. Such instability exacerbates looked-after children's well-documented vulnerability to mental health problems and jeopardises the stability needed for their educational and life success. In spite of the statutory requirement of the 1989 Children's Act to hear children's voices, an over emphasis on procedures and paperwork blocks effective communication and hinders the trusting relationships that children need to project a positive future. THE VERBATIM FORMULA (TVF) will explore the potential of applied arts practice to provide vital interventions, providing life-changing support for young people, as well as opportunities for adults and institutions to make time, to listen, and to reflect on current practices. At a time when the care system is failing badly, and when universities are likely to have more responsibility for ensuring diverse participation following the White Paper for Higher Education (2016), TVF will give opportunities for adult professionals in both sectors to work together and to make changes that respond to young people's needs. Using Verbatim Theatre practices to support the articulation and confidence of young people's voices, the project positions children as creative evaluators of the services that are responsible for their care and wellbeing. Based at QMUL and People's Palace Projects (PPP), a core operational team has been formed from QMUL's Departments of Drama, Business and Management, and Admissions and Widening Participation. Further collaborators include young adults from the Greater London Authority's Peer Outreach Team, and young adult care leavers from across London. Together, this team has facilitated a series of workshops that have supported 40 looked after children (14-18 years) in the South East and across the UK. Building on this experience, core activities in TVF will include a series of creative residential workshops facilitated in partnership with four universities in London to offer practical support to young people in articulating and planning their careers and education. In addition, a Young Researcher (YR) will develop a Portable Testimony Service (PTS) with the support and mentorship of Battersea Arts Centre (BAC). At QMUL, the PTS will be used to perform recorded, anonymised testimonies from looked-after children, care leavers, and adult care professionals, at an event to launch the university's new contextualised admissions policy. The PTS will share the audio testimonies further, providing a performative tool that creates space for dialogue and discussion around supporting looked-after children better. The YR and project's young partners will help to build an Alumni Network that will become a capable community of young people and adults who support each other in their journeys through care and beyond. Through a series of events to be held with BAC including a Festival of Creative Evaluative Practice, the project will support the development of and reflection on innovatory artistic and participatory practice as a means of evaluation and provision of services in loval governments and the third sector. A website and E-book for practitioners will disseminate the research, as well as a series of academic articles, papers, presentations and performances at major academic and professional conferences. Work with Parliament's Youth Select Committee will explore the utility of particpatory verbatim practice to wider policy contexts.

'Language Acts and Worldmaking' argues that language is a material and historical force, not a transparent vehicle for thought. Language empowers us, by enabling us to construct our personal, local, transnational and spiritual identities; it can also constrain us, by carrying unexamined ideological baggage. This dialectical process we call 'worldmaking'. If one language gives us a sense of place, of belonging, learning another helps us move across time and place, to encounter and experience other ways of being, other histories, other realities. Thus, our project challenges a widely held view about ML learning. While it is commonly accepted that languages are vital in our globalised world, it is too often assumed that language learning is merely a neutral instrument of globalisation-a commercialised skill set, one of those 'transferable skills' that are part of a humanities education. Yet ML learning is a unique form of cognition and critical engagement. Learning a language means recognising that the terms, concepts, beliefs and practices that are embedded in it possess a history, and that that history is shaped by encounters with other cultures and languages. To regenerate and transform ML we must foreground language's power to shape how we live, and realise the potential of ML learning to open pathways between worlds past and present. Our project realises this potential by breaking down the standard disciplinary approaches that constrain Spanish and Portuguese within the boundaries of national literary and cultural traditions. We promote research that explores the vast multilingual and multicultural terrain constituted by the Hispanic and Lusophone worlds, with their global empires and contact zones in Europe, the Americas, and Africa. Understanding Iberia as both the originator and the product of global colonising movements places Iberian Studies on a comparative, transnational axis and emphasizes diasporic identities, historic postcolonial thinking, modern decolonial movements and transcultural exchange. Our research follows five paths linked by an interest in the movement of peoples and languages across time and place. 'Travelling concepts' researches the stories and vocabularies that construct Iberia as a cultural crossroads, a border between East and West, a homeland for Jews, Muslims and Christians. We examine the ideological work performed by the cultural semantics Iberia, Al-Andalus, and Sefarad in Spanish, Portuguese, English, French, German, Arabic, Hebrew and ladino (Judeo-Spanish), from the Middle Ages to the present, in Europe and beyond. 'Translation acts' turns to the theatrical narrative, investigating how words, as performed speech and embodied language create a world on stage. Through translation, we travel across time and space, interrogating the original words and bringing them to our time and place. This strand exploits theatre's capacity to (re)generate known and imagined worlds. 'Digital Modelling as an act of translation' examines the effects of digital, mobile and networked technology upon our concept of 'global' culture, and what kinds of 'translation' are enacted as information enters and leaves the digital sphere in the context of Hispanic and Lusophone cultures. 'Loaded Meanings and their history' demonstrates the centrality of historical linguistics to cultural understanding, by investigating the process and significance of the learned borrowings in Ibero-Romance. Such borrowings acquire 'loaded' meanings that reflect and shape people's attitudes and worldviews. Finally, the agents of language learning-teachers-are the focus of the fifth strand, 'Diasporic Identities and the Politics of Language Teaching'. This strand analyzes the life stories of native teachers of Spanish, Portuguese and Catalan to identify the vocabularies and narrative patterns that help them make sense of and interrogate their professional and personal identities as transnational cultural agents in the UK.

In the 21st century, contemporary live performance and theatre are increasingly concerned with exploring the potential of speech and sound. This project' focus on the aural aspects of speech, sound, voice and sound design replaces the late 20th century dominance of literary textuality (new writing) and/or corporeality (physical theatre) as the primary dramaturgical motors in live performance. Some notable works that illustrate this trend include Robert Lepage's Lipsynch (2008), Simon McBurney's The Encounter (2016) but also, more symptomatically, the works known as 'gig theatre' in the UK (by artists such as Kate Tempest, Christopher Brett-Bailey, Kieran Hurley, Rash Dash, Middle Child etc). The trend emphasising aurality/orality has an international dimension and can be detected in its various manifestations in the works of, for example, Taylor Mac in the US, Lola Arias in Argentina, Valentijn Dhaenens in Belgium. Other noteworthy examples that privilege the dramaturgical rather than a merely utilitarian or decorative use of sound in live performance include forms such as headphones theatre (Rimini Protokoll, Rotozaza, ZU:UK) ordinarily considered a form of immersive or participatory theatre. Taking a broad spectrum approach, but at the same time focusing on examples found at the intersection of orality, aurality and contemporary performance-making, the project seeks to also connect this trend to verbatim theatre of the early 2000s and to argue that the renewed interest of makers in speech and sound should be viewed together as a part of a paradigm shift, rather than as isolated phenomena or unrelated sub-species of contemporary performance. These trends can be understood as belonging to the same paradigm as they seek to engage the audience primarily, though not exclusively, through an act of listening. The project will provide leadership by taking an interdisciplinary approach to the topic bringing together insights and expertise from ethnography, philosophy, digital humanities, musicology, museology and voice training as well as dramaturgy, performance and theatre studies. It will involve original field research as well as networking and public engagement activities. A two-tier international research network consisting of a pre-appointed Steering Group and an Advisory Group yet to be convened will be engaged to support various leadership and public engagement activities. The Fellow will co-commission new work with Battersea Arts Centre (BAC), which will form part of primary research together with a series of interviews with a range of performance-makers and experts on speech and sound from other disciplines. The research will be disseminated through a podcast, an international project conference, a special journal issue, a monograph, a workshop and a professional practice document for curators. As an example of innovative collaborative research activity, the Fellow will work with sound producer Tim Bano, members of the Research Network and in partnership with BAC and Digital Theatre Plus (DT+), on creating a 12-part podcast series ('Lend Me Your Ears') to be hosted by the DT+ website as an open access feature, dealing with the research topic of the project in a way accessible to publics outside of academia. In order to foster wider impact, the Fellow will also work with voice coach Jane Boston on creating a public speaking workshop based on the research generated through this project. Additionally, she will engage in relevant knowledge exchange with V&A's curators to investigate together ways of developing use of aural dramaturgies in curatorial practice. All these activities will serve to generate different kinds of knowledge and/or research outcomes suitable for widest possible dissemination.

The Verbatim Formula (TVF) is an AHRC-funded participatory action research project based at Queen Mary University of London that brings together a range of partners from the children's care public sector, higher education and the arts to support young people entering and leaving the care of the state. Responding to the adoption into UK law of the 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1992, that 'corporate parents' are legally obliged to give due regard to children's wishes and feelings in matters affecting them, the project aimed to explore the extent to which creative practice can support better listening by adult professionals. Using verbatim theatre, a form which requires care-ful listening and performance of recorded testimonies, TVF works with care-experienced young people as co-researchers, whose knowledge of care and education qualifies them as 'experts'. The project's 'Portable Testimony Service' gathers testimonies for 'pop-up' events in arts centres, social services' and universities' offices, and in policy fora. TVF invites meaningful, face-to-face dialogue between young people and adults, aiming to create attentive and spontaneous dialogue in the increasingly transactional life of education and care. As participatory action research it aims to empower and support its participants, building platforms from which to define gaps in provision, expose structural inequalities, and advocate for change. Since the project began in 2015, various indicators show that the care system is under ever greater pressure due to a long period of austerity. Increased numbers are entering care, and there are insufficient foster carers who can provide the support that is needed for vulnerable young people. In 2017-8, more than 6000 young people experienced unplanned endings to their placements in foster care. Such instability exacerbates looked-after children's well-documented vulnerability to mental health problems and jeopardises the continuity needed for their educational and life success. In spite of the statutory requirement to hear children's voices, an over emphasis on procedures and paperwork blocks effective communication and hinders the trusting relationships with both foster carers and social workers that children need to project a positive future. In the course of TVF's AHRC research period its young co-researchers repeatedly testified to the detrimental effects of transactional relationships with social workers, and the need for more loving foster care. As one 15-year-old told TVF, 'Young people who go into care have been through a lot. Sometimes a hug goes a long way'. Since the outbreak of Covid-19, questions of isolation and the importance of social contact have become even more evident. This follow-on project will deepen engagement with young people in applying TVF's practices to enable foster carers and social workers to understand the affective aspects of their practices within their professional roles and to consider the consequences of these for relationships. In a new partnership with socially engaged arts circus company Upswing, and sound artist Ian Dickinson, the TVF research team will work with young people, social workers and foster carers from Wandsworth and Manchester in creative workshops that integrate accessible physical trust activities with caring and careful practices of listening. A range of outputs will support the work of third sector partners Coram Voice, in listening to young people's voices in the development of good practice, and the Fostering Network in recruiting foster carers. These include a performance at Battersea Arts Centre and in the Manchester International Festival with audience interaction that will generate press coverage; a series of films based on young people's real life experiences that combat the stigmatisation of social care; digital training materials centring young people's advice; and an interactive workshop ready to be offered to UK Local Authorities.

The Digital Ghost Hunt is an immersive storytelling experience that transforms coding and digital technology from something foreign and mysterious into a tool of the imagination. In its first implementation, the Digital Ghost Hunt immersive experience will be realised in the historic Battersea Arts Centre (BAC), with a narrative that explore the building's rich historical memory using the creative spirit of an earlier era of open-ended technological experimentation. The key objective of The Digital Ghost Hunt is to present technology to students as an empowering tool, where coding emerges as - and fuses with - different forms of storytelling. It seeks to shift the context in which Key Stage 2 students see coding, engaging groups who may be uninterested in or feel excluded by digital technology, to open up an imaginative space through play for them to discover the creative potential of technology on their own terms. For this pilot project, we will publish code libraries and instructions for affordable hardware kits, and write an initial narrative formed around the fictive Ministry of Paranormal Hygiene. Learning facilitators will appear in class as a team of Ministry scientists, led by the Deputy Undersecretary of Paranormal Hygiene, to initiate their training. Using Raspberry Pi microprocessor kits, their first task will be to program their detection devices. During this phase students will be introduced to the basic logic of programming: variables, looping and decision structures. They will be taught how to use the high-level API (Application Interface) to query their sensors for information, store it and display it. The emphasis will be on students taking ownership of their devices, deciding which of the ghost detectors they want to build and how it works. When they are ready, students will begin their first hunt at a haunted historical building. Students will use the devices they've built to discover clues and research the history of the building to discover the ghost's identity. The ghost will in turn communication with them, given life by actors, practical effects and the poltergeist potential of the Internet of Things. Together students will unravel the mystery of the ghost's haunting, and help set it free.