HEartS Policy is led by the Centre for Performance Science, a partnership of the Royal College of Music and Imperial College London. It leverages the knowledge produced during two previous AHRC funded projects; The Health, Economic and Social impact of the ARTs (HEartS) project (AHRC 2018-21, AH/P005888/1), and HEartS Professional (AHRC 2019-22, AH/V013874/1), alongside the key industry partners. Three work packages (WPs) are themed around different findings, with tailored insights of our findings adapted to the needs of different audiences. WP1, Everyday HEarts: WP1 will comprise the development of a series of short, animated films targeting a public audience, highlighting key research findings on how arts and cultural engagement supports health and wellbeing, focused on the outcomes of HEartS. 90 second 'bitesize' animated films will give the lay public a direct and accessible route through which they can engage with knowledge that will enable them to enhance their practises to best support health and wellbeing. These animations will be complemented by a research report and educational resource pack, highlighting the key findings of the HEartS research. Using the same themes as the animated films, this pack will be oriented towards educators and aimed at integrating HEartS findings within personal, social, and health education. A primary objective of this resource is to support the use of the animations within schools as a tool for communicating the value of the arts for mental health and quality of life. WP2, HEartS in Health and Practice: WP2 will comprise the development of a podcast series (comprised of eight, thirty-minute episodes) split into two parts: WP2a, HEartS for Health and WP2b, HEartS in Practice. These podcasts will consist of researchers and practitioners in conversation with (i) health and clinical workers (such as GPs, mental health and community practitioners) exploring how HEartS practices can be more effectively implemented in practice, and (ii) discussion on the health of creative professionals, drawing more explicitly on the findings of HEartS Professional. Both sets of podcasts will be accompanied by policy briefs targeting both government but also organisational and educational policy. WP3, HEartS Summit: WP3 will develop a lasting impact for the findings of HEartS through the HEartS Summit. This two-day event brings together our project partners and other relevant stakeholders to (a) explore the interlinked outcomes of creative health and the future health of the creative workforce, and (b) collaboratively develop strategies for action that will cement project findings within policy and practice. This project will serve to maximise the impact of HEartS and HEartS Professional, extending its findings to both more diverse and targeted audiences, and through exchange with our knowledge partners extending well beyond unidirectional dissemination activity. Our work packages seek to maximise the accessibility of our research insights, and with the close collaboration of our partners, to enhance the social, economic and policy impact of the work beyond the lifespan of the project. In particular, tailored activities within each of the work packages will ensure that key messages are not just shared but presented alongside strategies to support long term change. Overall, the distinctive interlinked perspective of HEartS Follow On, combining the future of creative health alongside the health of creative professionals, will both build pathways for the integration of creative health into education, policy, and artistic practice, while also enhancing the sustainability and flourishing of the arts and cultural industries.

Folktales about fairies have become the province of children in modern British culture. Yet the success of works such as Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones and World of Warcraft has proved that other kinds of traditional tales still have power to enthral adult audiences and readers in today's world. Tolkien and Martin use European myth and legend to build their storyworlds with stunning success. Modern Fairies and Loathly Ladies will focus on the storyworld of British folk-tales and -songs about fairies and the supernatural, to explores how this material can be re-mediated by award-winning artists to be made relevant to modern audiences. Less-well-known and unusual stories involving fairies and the supernatural will be unearthed through archive research by Carolyne Larrington (Co-I). Larrington will present the tales, motifs and scenes from romance, folk-tale, ballad, and anecdote, recorded in Middle English, Latin and modern English in accessible forms, where necessary translating and glossing, so that the academic and obscure becomes relatable and vivid. Larrington will curate six folkloric themes: the fairy masculine; the fairy feminine, the changeling child, the shape-changing loathly lady, human experience in the fairy-world and the value of fairy treasure. Material relating to these themes will be presented to twelve world-class artists working in a range of different media, from folk musicians (including the PI, Fay Hield) and storytellers, to visual artists and poets. They will choose stories, scenes, and moments from the themes, and will work collaboratively to produce new songs, stories, poems and artworks based on the traditional material. Open notebooks, blogs and collaborative sharing will enable insight into the creative processes across different media while work is in progress. The new artworks produced will be performed to the public in six informal 'Gatherings' at Sage Gateshead. This performance format is open-ended and flexible, allowing artist and director responsiveness to individual audiences and the varying materials produced by the themes. One artist will take the lead in directing and curating each 'gathering'. A variety of art forms (music, painting, poetry, story-telling) will feature in every 'Gathering'; artist-audience interaction will be encouraged and invited. Programme notes of different types, and informal spoken introductions to themes will complement the artists' creations. Audience research will be carried out by Sarah Price (RA) using talk-based methods. The project leaders and their partners will be enabled to understand how audiences engage with new art drawing on traditional themes, how relevant they find folk-tale narratives and motifs to their own lives, what kinds of programme notes and other complementary materials enhance or detract from the audience experience, and how new audiences can be attracted and grown through local and traditional story mediation. Thus the project surfaces the experience and knowledge of creative artists in the work in progress stage and drills down into audience and performer experience through targeted qualitative interviews. In addition, this project represents a creative developmental phase for a future free-standing performance-based artwork, to be produced in collaboration with the Sage Gateshead. Moreover, the project tests the viability of 'gatherings' as a format for artistic development through performance. The inventive and responsive methodology, from source-research, through presentation to artists, creative composition and audience-engaged performance, to lasting outputs, will produce a new model for community-based arts interventions and experiences.

The North East of England is home to numerous and diverse South Asian communities. These are defined by geographic origin (e.g. Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, and the many regions within these areas), religion, and other social and historical factors. Within these communities music often plays a key, but complex role. It is an activity around which individuals build networks, and a medium through which communities make their culture audible to themselves and the wider community. Music's significance, though, may be double edged. It can be a vehicle through which to reach out to other communities; equally it may be a way of turning inwards - a symptom of resistance to connection, or an assertion of difference. Communities (South Asian, other minority ethnic, and white) can come into meaningful contact through music and other arts - but how is this fostered, beyond the occasional public event? How can both the local and global significance of such cultural forms be communicated and understood beyond their ethnic origins, and how might these shape new imaginings of a society of multiple - and possibly multiply connecting - cultures? The scoping study proposed here seeks to review existing bodies of literature germane to these and other questions, from such fields as ethnomusicology, urban musicology, cultural studies and sociology. It also draws on the expertise of organisations that already have much practical experience in representing and supporting South Asian and other minority ethnic communities. These include arts development organisations such as Gem Arts, Kalapremi, and Saarang - Arts and Culture, which, alongside The Sage Gateshead, a further Project Partner, have substantial experience of community engagement. With a view to an eventual larger, practically engaged project (in effect a piece of interactive fieldwork), this review aims to scope out some of the key issues and essential methodologies - both interrogating the existing scholarly and theoretical literature, and drawing on the significant practical experience of arts oranisations whose concern is with (or includes) South Asian music. Our key research questions include: * In what ways do South Asian musics act as a vehicle for articulating identity and for fostering and connecting communities - including connections with 'majority ethnic' society? (Conversely, how might musical differences reinforce cultural ones?) * How could this potential be further developed, and what role could arts organisations and educational institutions play in this? How can organisations better interface with one another? * What is the impact of such factors as class, religion, gender, race, ethnicity, and histories of migration in shaping communities, and in both facilitating and impeding connection between them? * To what extent can music (and other art forms) serve to cut across such factors (and to what it extent might it reinforce them)? * How, in these contexts, should we understand such terms as 'network' and 'community', and how might the one strengthen the other? *To what extent are answers to the above relevant to other minority ethnic communities, and to broader understandings of multiculturalism? In this investigation we will collaborate with arts development organisations by means of structured interviews and workshops. We will share our various types of expertise with the intention of further developing strategies for impact on - or, perhaps better, agency with - communities and groups who seek greater cultural and social connectivity through music and other arts. Our outputs, in addition to the literature review, will include conference presentations, at least two peer reviewed articles, and an action plan for future engagement between our own HEI, communities and arts organisations.

In the past few decades, there has been a surge of international interest in the role of the arts and culture in healthcare, public health and health promotion, on an individual and community level. However, the vast majority of research studies have focused on the effects of targeted, time-limited arts interventions on particular patient groups. Yet, much of the arts and cultural engagement across the UK is not confined to specific interventions but involves a more general, ubiquitous participation that can be harder to measure through experimental studies. A select number of public health studies have found associations between cultural participation (including attending concerts, museums and galleries) and self-reported health, as well as inverse associations between cultural participation and mortality risk. However, important questions remain, and to date, there have been no large-scale public health studies examining the impact of the arts in the UK. This project is led by the Centre for Performance Science, an internationally distinctive partnership of the Royal College of Music and Imperial College London, with an extensive track record in arts, health and social research. It explores the effect of (i) activities that involve actively 'doing' (e.g. music, dance, art, photography and drama) and (ii) activities that require physical attendance (e.g. attending concerts, monuments, museums, galleries, cinemas, heritage archives and theatre); (iii) 'home-based' activities (e.g. listening to the radio, watching TV, reading, storytelling, using arts-based apps, digital arts experiences, online music co-production). Our research questions identify the impact of the arts and culture on individual, social and economic measures of health and wellbeing, as well as explore how associations vary between different socioeconomic, geographical and ethnic populations within the UK. To explore these questions, the project is organised into four work packages. Work package 1 will involve assessing existing data including undertaking a meta-analysis of previous studies and exploring a UK cohort study that includes some questions on the arts. However, recognising the limited data currently available, work packages 2 and 3 are based on a large-scale national survey to be carried out during our study. Open to all adults in the UK, the survey will target the general population as well as participants diagnosed with one of four major health conditions facing the UK: mental health, cancer, cardiovascular disease and chronic respiratory diseases. These conditions have all previously been researched in smaller arts-in-health intervention studies but not at a public health level, and their inclusion will facilitate understanding of the relationships between culture and the individual, social and economic facets of health and wellbeing. A total of 25,000 participants will be recruited to complete an anonymous online questionnaire consisting of demographic questions, validated psychological scales and economic metrics, assessments of arts and cultural participation and self-reporting of health. Work package 2 will explore the questions with a cross-sectional analysis of these data with nested case-control studies; work package 3 will monitor a sub-section of the sample as a cohort for the following year with 6-monthly updates to track longitudinal change in arts engagement. Recognising the complexity of cultural engagement and health, work package 4 will add context to the survey data, with a sub-sample of survey participants taking part in qualitative telephone interviews to explore motivations for, and experiences of, arts engagement across the UK and how this is reported to intersect with health behaviours, perceptions and outcomes. Through the extensive epidemiology methods proposed, an ambitious sample size and nested qualitative data, the findings promise to redefine the value of the arts and culture for public health in the UK.

This unique consortium draws on the research excellence of interdisciplinary and complementary design innovation labs at three universities - Lancaster University, Newcastle University and the Royal College of Art and connects it with public and private sectors, linking large and small-scale businesses, service providers and citizens. Together, our expertise in developing and applying creative techniques to navigate unexplored challenges includes that of designers, artists, curators, producers, broadcasters, engineers, managers, technologists and writers - and draws on wider expertise from across the partner universities and beyond. The Creative Exchange responds to profound changes in practice in the creative and media-based industries stimulated by the opening of the digital public space, the ability of everyone to access, explore and create in any aspect of the digital space, moving from 'content consumption' to 'content experience'. It explores new forms of engagement and exchange in the broadcast, performing and visual arts, digital media, design and gaming sectors, by focusing on citizen-led content, interactive narrative, radical personalization and new forms of value creation in the context of the 'experience economy'. The primary geographic focus is the Northwest of England centred around the opportunity presented by the growth of MediaCityUK and its surrounding economy. The three universities act as local test beds with field trials in London, Lancaster and Newcastle prior to larger public facing trials in the northwest. This will support the North West regional strategy for growth in digital and creative media industries, whilst generating comparative research and development locally, nationally and internationally. The Creative Exchange has been developed in response to a paradigm shift in content creation and modes of distribution in a digitally connected world, which has profound impact for the arts and humanities. This transformational-change is taking place within the landscape of a growing digital public space that includes archives, data, information and content. How we navigate and experience this space - and how we generate content for and within it - is central to how we create economic, social, cultural and personal value. The Hub draws on new and agile approaches to knowledge exchange for the creative economy that have been previously developed by the partner universities and new ones co-developed with specialist arts organizations, sector organizations and communities of users.