Updates on the ATTUNE project
ATTUNE logo
ATTUNE is a project using creative arts methodologies to explore and understand the mechanisms behind poor adolescent mental health, including Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs). Here are some updates from three of their work packages (click the headings to be taken the relevant Work Package page on the ATTUNE website).
Work Package 1 (WP1)
In this, the team conducted multiple creative-arts workshops across England with young people, led by their creative practitioners. The arts modalities varied, from dance, theatre and performance to photography, painting and music composition. This allowed young people to express their lived experience without the confines of traditional data collection and use their voice to share what they felt and meant without other narratives imposing.
ATTUNE has worked with young people from ethnic minority backgrounds, the LGBTQ+ community, the traveller community, young people with disabilities and learning difficulties and refugees. Trust and making the space safe was incredibly important. They now have a huge art portfolio that we are currently analysing using framework analysis.
Work Package 3 (WP3) – Public health resource
Example of cards from Validating Voices resource
ATTUNE have produced a co-designed public health resource, Validating Voices. This resource was produced following workshops, attended by young people and professionals, in Kent, Leeds and Cornwall. In the initial workshop the findings and artwork produced in WP1 were shared. A common lived experience of the young was invalidation - from parents/carers, teachers, clinicians and peers. In the subsequent two workshops, the young people and professionals were asked what public health resource they would like to see in their settings. This led to the design of a resource aimed to help to start conversations and recognise invalidating and validating behaviours.
The resource is a box of cards, on which are written different lived experiences of young people and questions. The resource can be used in a one-to-one or group setting, with just young people or just professionals. Once the initial conversation takes place, the card is flipped over, revealing another detail about this young person’s life, that may or may have made a difference. This resource is supported by online resources on their website, including videos of these scenarios acted by our young people and ATTUNE team. This is an element of forum theatre that took place during the workshops that both young people and professionals thought was incredibly powerful.
The resource is now in its evaluation phase, currently deployed in 10 organisations across England.
Work Package 4 (WP4) – A serious mobile game
This second resource is ‘Ace of Hearts’, a mobile game which is split into four mini-games with different gaming styles, exploring a different cluster of ACEs taken from the lived experience of young people in WP1 and WP3.
Game 1 - Horse and Foal – explores bereavement and parental responsibility placed on a young person in a 2D storytelling game.
Game 2 - Hard Times – explores a young person in poverty in a 3D interactive game.
Game 3 - Out of Shell – explores a young person with disability in a 2D exploring game, inspired by Narrative Exposure Therapy (NET).
Game 4 - Dial It Back – explores a young person experiencing gender dysphoria in a 2D tower defence style game.
The games were co-designed with young people in iterative sprints. The game developers based at the University of Falmouth developed the games for 4-6 weeks, before letting the young people test and feedback on the games current progress. ATTUNE also held an online Experience-Based Co-Design (EBCD) session over two days for professionals to attend and feedback on the game. The game is now entering the evaluation phase for acceptability and feasibility.
Watch a walkthrough of the Horse and Foal game below:
Find out more
For further information on ATTUNE’s projects please visit their project page. Also see Dr Jed Boardman’s blog post about ACEs and the work of the ATTUNE project.
