Online arts and culture for young people’s mental health – new research programme

3 April 2023

Young people will help create an ‘online museum’ as a way of improving their mental health, as part of a new and ground-breaking £2.61m research project.

Young people will help create an ‘online museum’ as a way of improving their mental health, as part of a new and ground-breaking £2.61m research project hosted by Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust, led by researchers from Oxford University and funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR).

The project, known as ORIGIN (Optimising cultural expeRIences for mental health in underrepresented younG people onlINe), will run from 2023-2028 and is a collaboration between NHS Trusts, multiple UK universities, with museum and charity partners. The study involves diverse young people aged 16-24 co-designing an online arts and culture intervention aimed at reducing anxiety and depression.

Its effectiveness will then be tested in a trial of nearly 1,500 young people, including some of the most underrepresented young people, specifically LGBTQ+ and autistic young people, ethnic minorities and those who live in some of the most deprived areas of the UK, including Cornwall, Liverpool, Sheffield and Blackpool and those on NHS waiting lists for mental health support.

ORIGIN builds on preliminary research conducted during the first-of-its-kind O-ACE study, an interdisciplinary project at the University of Oxford in which GLAM worked with the Department of Psychiatry and the Oxford Internet Institute to understand how and if online arts and culture could be beneficial for mental health and wellbeing. The project culminated in an online cultural experience called Ways of Being that was co-designed and tested for mental health in young people. Despite limited time and resources in developing Ways of Being, it was enthusiastically received by young people and reduced negative feelings when compared with a traditional museum website.

 

Image of young woman using a laptop and quote about the project

 

The project is part of GLAM's growing portfolio of work investigating the value of cultural experiences for wellbeing and health, using its spaces, audiences and remarkable collections to create opportunities to put research into practice. To find out more about the project, visit https://www.glam.ox.ac.uk/origin