This presentation explores co-producing research with young people and families during the COVID-19 lockdown/physical distancing

1. Left On Read: Loneliness, physical
distancing and HomeLabs
J.Duggan@mmu.ac.uk
@dugganjr & @youthloneliness

2. Acknowledgements and Polyphony
• 42nd Street
• Youth co-researchers at 42nd
Street
• West Rhyll Young People’s
Project
• MAP Norfolk
• N-Gage 360 Ballymeena
• Fairbridge/The Prince’s Trust,
Glasgow
• Artist practitioners (Hwa Young
Jung, Mark Carrigan, Ransack
Theatre, Felicity, Tricia Coleman,
Jana Wendler and Jane
Hollington)
• GMHAYA
• KYSO
• Co-op Foundation
• The young people

3. Loneliness Connects Us (Batsleer and
Duggan)
• Research youth loneliness with young people through creative, arts-
based, co-produced and youth work methods
• Oct 2016 – July 2019: 14 co-researchers, 200+ young people
(Manchester, Glasgow, Great Yarmouth, Rhyl, Ballymena…)
• Phase 1: Building capacity – Carousel of Methods
• Phase 2: Data collection
• Phase 3: Immersive theatre performance tour (Missing)
• Phase 4: Legacy (youth summit/ FOMO project)

4. Carousel of Methods
• Community philosophy
• Research and ethics
• DIY making
• Immersive theatre
• Group discussion – research/
quotes
• Games/ ludic walks
• Collages
• Playlists and films
• Scenario activities
• Comics
• Radio programmes
• Attended theatre & restaurant
(accompaniment)
• Co-produced workshops with
other young people
• Youth Summit

5. Immersive performance: ‘Missing’

6. FOMO
#YouthLonelines @YouthLoneliness

7. Eventful co-production
• Defining co-production
• Co-production as other approaches (e.g. PAR, collaborative ethnography)
• Co-production as empowerment, social justice, enacting equality etc
• Co-production as service delivery model – participation throughout project
• Process and speculative approaches (e.g. Whitehead, Stengers, Shaviro, Massumi)
• Co-productive imagination
• For Whitehead ‘philosophy is akin to poetry’: its descriptions are carefully constructed
utterances (poesis) ‘requiring a leap of the imagination’— [creating] lures for feeling, and by
extension for thought and action… (Gaskill and Nocek, 2014, p.8).
• Processes and practices (propositions, enabling constraints, creative advance,
difference and diversity)
• Attune and amplify ‘It Matters!’ (Stengers, 2019)

8. Left on Read – Homelabs
• Original plan: Co-produce Loneliness Labs
• focus on loneliness (e.g. sending a message that is ‘left on read’ or not
knowing what to say), method/practice (e.g. playful research, immersive
theatre), modality (e.g. sound, movement, images, improvisation, digital),
and genre (e.g. empirical research, fiction, documentary, performance) or
context (e.g. home, park, street).
• Labs (galleries, museums) separation from the world
• COVID arts and cultural offers online (e.g. paint with Grayson Perry)
• Homelabs: co-produced encounters with loneliness to be staged by
young people in their homes/outside spaces/online

9. HomeLab 01: ‘Comic project’
• Comic provocation (afrofuturism)
• How has your life changed?
• What world do you want to go back to?
• Responses from Creative Agents (e.g.
comics, TikToks, gifs, comics, songs)
• Cycles of creation and sharing (online
and via post), writing and re-writing
• Collaborative writing project +
forum/legislative theatre
• Participatory futures activity No Small Plans (Chicago Architecture
School)/ Wacker Manual

10. Thanks and contacts
J.Duggan@mmu.ac.uk
@dugganjr
@youthloneliness
http://www.lonelinessconnectsus.org