Delivered by Edge Hill University, Everton in the Community and Tate Liverpool, Tackling the Blues promotes mental health in education through sports, physical activity and the arts

Award-winning mental health programme Tackling the Blues has appointed six new recruits.

Delivered by Edge Hill University, Everton in the Community and Tate Liverpool, the programme promotes mental health in education through sports, physical activity and the arts.

Tackling the Blues is delivered by students and staff across Edge Hill’s Department of Sport and Physical Activity and Faculty of Education and, since its launch in 2015, has engaged with almost 1,000 young people across Merseyside and West Lancashire.

Funding for the new recruits follows on from a £527,000 funding award from the Office for Students and Research England earlier this year in recognition of the vital impact it has on the student experience.

The programme received the award for demonstrating the benefits it brings to students, graduates and external partners through involvement in knowledge exchange activities.

Emily McCurrie has joined Edge Hill’s Faculty of Education as the partnership development and engagement manager and will spend the first two years of her post leading the operational activity of Tackling the Blues.

Prior to joining the programme, Emily lived in Scotland for 18 years, where she studied health psychology and worked as a Cognitive Behavioural Therapist in the NHS.

Tate Liverpool has appointed Dr Emma Curd and Phil McClure as Tackling the Blues coordinators to oversee the development and delivery of the new arts strand and they will work to encourage young people to use art as a tool to explore, understand and aid their emotional health and wellbeing.

Emma is an artist, facilitator and researcher, who uses creative and participatory methods to create spaces for discussion, collaboration and co-production. Phil was previously the lead for participation and democracy at Halton Youth Provision. He also led on LGBTQ+ youth work in the borough.

Everton in the Community has recruited James Ratcliffe as a new Tackling the Blues coordinator to help develop the programme’s sports and physical activity strand. James previously completed his MSc in Sport, Physical Activity and Mental Health at Edge Hill, where he gained experience as a lead mentor on Tackling the Blues.

Edge Hill has recruited two research Assistants, Rachel Wilcock and Aston Monro, who will be responsible for measuring the impact of the programme on children and young people and will evaluate how student mentors benefit from knowledge exchange opportunities.

Rachel joins the team following three years in another mental health-focused research assistant role at Edge Hill. Aston has recently graduated from Edge Hill with an MSc in Sport, Physical Activity and Mental Health.

Professor of Sport and Physical Activity, Andy Smith, and Dr Helen O’Keeffe, from the Faculty of Education, both lead on the project at Edge Hill. Prof Smith said: “It is fantastic to be expanding our team as we reach such a significant point in the programme’s journey.”