Belonging through Creative Connections: a feasibility study of an arts-based intervention to facilitate social connections between university students

Abstract

Studies show that university students report higher levels of mental health problems and lower well-being than their non-student peers. As demand for university well-being services increases, so too does the need for alternative interventions to support student well-being for students in various states of mental health. In this paper, we introduce I Belong: Creative Connections, an arts-based intervention that aims to decrease student loneliness, increase senses of belonging, and support positive mental health and well-being by facilitating social connections through fun, positive, shared experiences based on students’ own interests. We review the first two pilot years of the programme to evaluate the feasibility of the intervention using both quantitative (questionnaires) and qualitative (focus groups and interviews) methods. We aimed to investigate if Creative Connections reached the intended participants, to evaluate if unconventional execution of focus groups can be used to effectively gain insight into student’s experiences of the programme, and to assess the feasibility of a co-creative approach to the programme’s design, implementation, and evaluation. Evaluation results show that Creative Connections is a feasible intervention that achieves its envisaged aims. These results also offer insight into how the programme’s co-creative approach may be adjusted to better support students’ social experiences of the programme.

Keywords

• Belonging
• co-creation
• co-curricular activity
• student well-being
• arts-based intervention
• Rachel Maunder, University of Northampton, UK