Public trust in policing is currently extremely low, with a real deterioration in public confidence in the police over the past few years.   

In the context of widely-publicised instances of individual police brutality and malpractice, alongside evidence of systemic racism, misogyny, and homophobia raised in the recent Casey Review and in the MacPherson report over 20 years ago, we investigate the ways in which arts-based interventions might impact police practice, and begin to address the crisis in police legitimacy. We know that arts and culture can have benefits in social, health, and economic terms, and arts initiatives are now widely used in prisons and across the criminal justice system. We consider then the potential impacts of police forces engaging with and through creative endeavours.

We began this research in 2021 by examining the partnership between West Midlands Police and the Coventry City of Culture Trust during which an embedded police team worked with creative practitioners to co-design and co-deliver arts-based initiatives, such as: a forest camp with young people deemed at risk of school exclusion/withdrawal and/or criminal exploitation, a mural with people with experience of homelessness, and an artist-in-residence Link opens in a new windowscheme.  

In examining this partnership, we evaluated the possibilities and challenges of this collaborative endeavour, considering the opportunities that may be afforded by the arts over more traditional methods of police-community engagement, for instance sport. Our full report into the partnership is now availableLink opens in a new window.  

We’re currently building further on this research: evaluating an outreach programme led by WMP and Ernst and Young for young people at risk of school exclusion and/or involvement in criminal activity; constructing an empathetic story-telling initiative; and collaborating with the Belgrade Theatre to produce a performance piece based on the findings from our research around young people’s experiences of policing in Coventry.