Levers Lab

The Levers Lab shifted the focus from what creative work tells us, to what actually makes a difference.

Arts based approaches are often described as beneficial, but there is still a need to better understand how and why they support young people’s mental health. In this Lab, participants explored the “active ingredients” of creative practice, asking what feels meaningful, what supports connection, and what helps change happen.

Young people took part in a range of arts based activities, including film making, painting and drawing, and photography. Importantly, they were able to choose the art form that felt right for them, allowing different ways of working and expressing themselves to sit alongside one another.

Alongside this creative work, participants were given time to engage in independent reflective field notes. These notes captured what they were noticing, thinking and feeling as the workshop unfolded, in whatever format suited them. Some wrote single words, others created drawings, and some recorded voice or video reflections.

This created space to pause and pay attention to experience as it happened, rather than only reflecting afterwards. The field notes offered a more personal layer of insight, helping to surface things that might not always be said out loud.

Together, this combination of creative choice, shared exploration and individual reflection helped build a clearer picture of what supports change, and why.

This learning fed into the development of a logic model, shaped by youth, arts and science perspectives, which maps how arts based approaches can support mental health in different ways.