Keeping us Safe? is a new collaboration with The Belgrade Theatre in Coventry. Using drama and other creative processes designed to engage young people in dialogue and debate, creative practitioners are working with COPR researchers Jackie Hodgson & Rachel Lewis, and two schools in the Coventry area, to question and interrogate ‘policing’ in its broadest terms. This is part of a wider body of work around Reimagining Policing through the Arts.

Over 2023 The Belgrade Theatre and University of Warwick developed a piece of theatre After Preston and workshop programme bringing to the fore research on perceptions of policing within communities and the police force, and the potential of arts-led police engagement with young people as a more empathetic way of building understanding and challenging police practice (Hodgson and Lewis 2022, 2023).

This new co-created project Keeping us Safe? builds on and expands the themes and insights from the Warwick research, and the pre- and post- After Preston workshops with young people. Drawing on a wider range of creative work, it uses the Belgrade Theatre’s current body of produced and co-produced work as a jumping off point to engage young people directly on issues relating to policing. The final phase of the project sees young people developing their own creative output.

The creative methodology enables open-ended conversations between the young people and creative facilitators around the themes of authority, safe spaces and policing. This work will enrich and develop the research, ensuring a valuable body of insight that is inclusive of young people’s ideas and lived experiences: through this project, young people will be key co-producers of knowledge.