The Voices project engaged with 1860 children and young people aged five-to-18 years over 21 months in the North East of England during the pandemic about their experiences of COVID-19 across multiple life facets through participatory methods using drawing, writing, focus groups, comics and action cycles. They were from 70+ mostly economically disadvantaged schools and groups in North East England. We heard what it was like doing online schooling at home and attending school with Covid-19 arrangements, and we heard about varied and complex aspects of informal learning and experience. This project was co-produced by researchers and practitioners from Newcastle University (UK) and the charity/NGO Children North East, and with children and young people. We draw on the work of Forbes and Kerr (2022) of asset-based approaches to communities considered vulnerable. They suggest the need for “policymakers to shift attention from ‘fixing’ the perceived deficits of disadvantaged neighbourhoods, to recognising and building on the resources, or assets, they hold” (Forbes and Kerr, 2022, 1). This paper considers this juxtaposition between assets and vulnerabilities from a number of perspectives and we present two of them in some detail. These include, 1) taking a non-stigmatising approach to sampling and 2) co-producing some aspects of the research with children and young people. In terms of sampling, we set out to engage with children who were from economically disadvantaged backgrounds and from a range of vulnerable situations. Our paper discussed how we negotiated building our sample at the same time as refusing from an ethical perspective to ask for individual vulnerability data. Co-production assumes mutual respect for each other’s contribution to design, create and deliver (research, services, actions) and therefore requires the recognition of the assets of all those involved. A range of different methods (focus groups, drawing pictures, writing, producing comics with artists, producing a TikTok video) were built into the project to enable children and young people to respond in different ways. Co-production was built into the project from the start with action cycles co-produced with young people engaging with stakeholders in the areas of transport, employment and digital lives. We consider what arose for children as home school boundaries collided in a number of ways not all of them expected and themes from the research were in every aspect of children’s lives.

Forbes, C., & Kerr, K. (2022). Endogenous assets-mapping: a new approach to conceptualizing assets in order to understand young people’s capabilities and how these relate to their desired educational outcomes in disadvantaged neighbourhoods. Cambridge Journal of Education, 1-17.