The Tree(s) of Hope and Ambition: An arts-based social science informed, participatory research method to explore children's future hopes, ambitions and support in relation to COVID-19

This paper offers a new child-centred methodology that explores children's visions of their futures, encourages self-reflection and depth and shares children's voices with peers and researchers, as unbrokered as possible. This final stage of a longitudinal, arts-based, social science-informed project was delivered by partnering with schools in socially disadvantaged areas of Bristol, a UK city. Our two-phase activity used a Tree metaphor to explore children's hopes, ambitions and support, looking forward to recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. The analysis combined multi-disciplinary thematic and visual-narrative analysis, and revealed diversity, intersection and individuality in themes that scaled out from the child and their family over different timescales. Themes included emotion (concerns; empathy), experiences (happenings, resources skills; aspirations) and relationships, linked to their recent experiences of COVID-19 mitigation. The paper reflects critically on children's and researchers' positionality, and the complexities involved in developing research methods that encourage children's autonomy, agency and authenticity.