Interviews were conducted with key stakeholders within each city. Additionally a desk-based review of recent arts and cultural activity for young people including that aimed at new arrivals has been conducted. Through this the project team began to understand how the municipality currently work to develop cultural citizenship for young people, the perceptions of young migrants of their new place, and the response of the host communities to young new arrivals. The project team then worked with artists who had worked with refugee groups before to develop a planned programme of arts and cultural activity and visits to cultural places within our two cities. An ethnographically-informed study was conducted comprising close observation of each session within this programme, documenting what the participants did through photographs and fieldnotes. The project team used method of photo-elicitation drawing on these images in our interviews with the young participants. The interviews were conducted in English or Swedish with the aid of the young people’s translation apps on their mobile phones when necessary. Due to the sensitivities of the data and the protocols used data sharing is not possible. The record consists of metadata and documentation.Since 2015 cities across Europe have increasingly become destinations for young forced migrants. This project brings together city leaders, artists, and researchers to promote integration and increase social participation in communities affected by migration. Given that participation in the arts can enhance place-making and encourages social belonging, this project will develop, implement, and evaluate arts-programmes for migrants in case-study cities in England and Sweden. It will understand barriers to social integration amongst refugees and host communities, especially relating to gender This will lead to knowledge translation from this empirical study to develop sustainable solutions to social integration and citizenship.

Interviews were conducted with adult stakeholders from the cultural and civic sector and from representatives of support and voluntary organisations supporting asylum-seekers and refugees in each site. In addition, photo-elicitation interviews were conducted with young participants in the roll out of the Art of Belonging programme in each city.