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Arts interventions to prevent young people becoming involved in crime

Despite the plethora of arts interventions and associated evaluation studies, there is currently no existing up-to-date systematic review on the effects of a full range of arts interventions for at-risk and offending children and young people (8-25 years) on behavioural, psychosocial, cognitive and offending outcomes. This review will help develop an understanding of the effectiveness of arts interventions in reducing risk and offending behaviours and build evidence on the contextual factors about how effective interventions can be best designed and implemented taking a theory-of-change approach. 

A mixed methods systematic review on the effects of arts interventions for at-risk and offending children and young people (8-25 years) on behavioural, psychosocial, cognitive and offending outcomes. The systematic review will include a theory-of-change approach to ensure the development of an evidence-led framework of the processes by which arts interventions might work in preventing offending behaviours. This commissioned programme of work will support the on-going development of the YEF toolkit through the translation of evidence into accessible, useful and useable information for a range of diverse stakeholders seeking to make decisions about arts interventions, young people and offending behaviour.

The work will support the mission of the YEF to prevent young people from becoming involved in violent crime. 


Meet the Principal Investigator(s) for the project

Professor Louise Mansfield
Professor Louise Mansfield - Career History Louise Mansfield is Professor of Sport, Health and Social Sciences and Research Lead for Welfare, Health and Wellbeing in the Institute of Environment, Health and Societies.  Her research focuses on the relationship between sport, physical activity and public health and wellbeing. She is interested in partnership and community approaches in sport and physical activity and issues of health, wellbeing, inequality and diversity. She has led research projects for the Department of Health, Youth Sport Trust, sportscotland, Economic and Social Research Council, Medical Research Council, Macmillan Cancer Support, Public Health England and Sport England. She sits on the editorial boards for Leisure Studies, Qualitative Research in Sport, Exercise and Health and the International Review for the Sociology of Sport and is Managing Editor of Annals of Leisure Research. Louise is known for  is known for developing evidence to inform policy and practice.

Related Research Group(s)

people doing yoga

Health and Wellbeing Across the Lifecourse - Inequalities in health and wellbeing in the UK and internationally; welfare, health and wellbeing; ageing studies; health economics.


Partnering with confidence

Organisations interested in our research can partner with us with confidence backed by an external and independent benchmark: The Knowledge Exchange Framework. Read more.


Project last modified 11/03/2022