Creative Insights is a research project focused on exploring young people’s perspectives on health inequalities, particularly their ideas for potential solutions. In 2018, the project was conceived as a partnership between researchers at University of Glasgow’s MRC/CSO Social and Public Health Sciences Unit and CoSS, and community organisations Impact Arts in Glasgow and Leeds Playhouse that would involve dynamic face-to-face workshops with artists, young people and researchers working together to develop research and creative outputs with a message for policymakers. In practice, the onset of the pandemic switched the focus to delivering all aspects of the project online, including focus group discussions, workshop activities, and individual and collaborative art-making. As such, the data included in this collection comprises transcripts of Zoom recordings and the final artworks presented by each of the young participants. Focus group discussions focused on various themes relating to health inequalities and their potential solutions, with descriptions of prompts and activities detailed in the topic guides.The enduring existence of health inequalities, unfair differences in the health and wellbeing of different groups in society, is a key concern for many citizens, researchers and policymakers. Research that has focused on public views of the causes of these differences suggests that, in general, people have well-developed understandings of the factors that contribute to health inequalities. People from communities across the UK have identified the range of upstream factors which influence their health and the health of those around them, including housing conditions, unemployment and lack of funding for communities and services. Despite both policymakers and public groups understanding these causes, limited progress has been made towards reducing health inequalities in Scotland or UK-wide. Citizens' views on this lack of progress, and their perceptions of potential policy measures which could reduce health inequalities, have not been explored in detail. Young people's perspectives on these issues are also not currently well understood. Media representations of health inequalities can negatively impact those communities and individuals most impacted by inequalities by furthering feelings of stigma or shame, related to the areas they live in being labelled deprived or disadvantaged. Calls for new qualitative research suggests that researchers should engage sensitively with the topic and avoid stigmatising language, but also aim to include diverse population groups to explore the consequences of inequality across society. Various models of research have been proposed to overcome some of these barriers, including participatory research which invites participants to actively shape projects and contribute to outputs alongside researchers. In order to develop our understanding of young people's views on health inequalities, this project involves working together with young people in Glasgow and Leeds, cities where reducing health inequalities is a priority. Creative organisations (Impact Arts in Glasgow and Opera North in Leeds), who have contributed to the development of this project, will facilitate the engagement of groups of young people in several workshop sessions. These sessions will be led by researchers and creative partners, who are experienced in delivering creative engagement events with groups of the public, to explore the causes and consequences of health inequalities. Participants will also be supported to discuss their perspectives on potential policy solutions, pursuing those issues which they prioritise as most important or most relevant to their lives, communities or peers. Over the course of the sessions participants will also engage in creative processes to produce artistic outputs that reflect their perspectives on the enduring public health problem of health inequalities. These creative outputs will provide the focus for a series of engagement events and workshops with representatives from local government, health boards, third sector organisations and local communities. By generating new insights and creative representations of these, young people will be facilitated to actively contribute to ongoing policy discussions about the reduction of social inequalities in health across both local and national contexts.

Partnerships with arts organisations Impact Arts in Glasgow and Opera North and Leeds Playhouse in Leeds were formed for the facilitation of the project. These organisations shared experience and expertise in community engagement and creative capacity building and managed a pivot to online delivery brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. Working with the organisations’ programme managers and arts practitioners for an extended period to develop activities and materials, the project design was refined and a programme of four-day workshops was developed for engagement with six groups of up to 10 young people, three groups in each city, Glasgow and Leeds. Working with creative partner organisations to recruit participants, six groups of young people, aged between 14 and 21 years, were invited to participate in workshops. Rather than recruiting based on specific demographic characteristics, groups of young people with a shared interest or experience, who were in contact with creative partner organisations either directly or through links with other community groups, were invited to take part. Some had participated in programmes with the arts organisations previously while others had ties to community organisations that worked specifically with young people. Potential participants were contacted via email or WhatsApp with initial details of the project and invited to contact the lead creative facilitator for further information. Project information was supplied to all interested young people in text and video form, and lead facilitators from each creative organisation then followed up with interested young people to confirm participation and give details on how to join the group. Each participant was provided with a range of art materials for the purposes of participating as well as for their personal use, gifts as a thank you for participation, and compensation of £100 in recognition of their time and expertise. A total of 39 young people participated in the project, 21 in Glasgow and 18 in Leeds. The first group took part in October 2020 and the final group in May 2021. During this period, physical distancing was mandated throughout the UK to limit the spread of COVID-19. As a result, workshops were conducted online using the video conference platform Zoom. Participants were sent boxes of art materials as well as project information, schedules, and public health evidence in the post before the start of the workshops. Four hour-long sessions were held each day, with breaks in between each. Young people took part in private spaces, largely within their homes, and were provided with laptops/tablets if these were not available to them. Facilitation was led by creative practitioners and youth workers, with resources and provocations having been co-developed with the researchers. The first set of workshops in Glasgow served as a pilot and activities, discussion topics, and artistic methods were altered in subsequent groups based on feedback from participants. In general, the creative practitioners acted as lead facilitators, with researchers offering facilitation support, answering questions and observing sessions. In general, the first two days focused on exploring understandings of health and inequalities while days three and four focused on potential ways to address health inequalities. The first session with each group was used to discuss consent, facilitate young people’s development of a code of conduct and provide details about how data would be managed. Each day involved warm-up games and activities featuring creative engagement techniques; engagement with research evidence through videos, Kahoot! quizzes, online/paper-based resources; large and small group discussion responding to evidence, reflecting on polling or responding to whiteboard contributions; and throughout responsive creative practice and art-making (capacity building sessions, individual and group development work, facilitator feedback and collaborative development). The Glasgow groups focused on visual arts, while the Leeds groups focused on creative writing and performance, based on the expertise of each partner organisation. The visual arts activities in Glasgow included drawing, printmaking, and collages and the performance activities in Leeds included creative writing, mime, and speech writing. The content of each group’s workshops was driven by young people’s interests and concerns, allowing the groups to engage with specific areas of interest to them. On the final day of workshops, each group held a showcase webinar to share their projects and opinions with a small audience of invited guests including artists and creative professionals, researchers working in health inequalities and community/youth engagement professionals. Ethical approval was granted by the University of Glasgow College of Social Sciences Research Ethics Committee, application number 400200006.