Youth and Horror Network

The relationship between childhood and horror has persisted throughout the history of youth culture, from fairy tales and nursery rhymes to the ongoing popularity of Halloween and recent worldwide phenomena like 'Goosebumps' and 'Stranger Things'. For youth today, who are growing up in an age characterised by anxiety and instability, horror has the potential to help them understand the world around them, other people, and themselves. However, the meeting of children and horror consistently attracts controversy due to unsupported perceptions that the genre is a harmful influence upon children and young people. This international network will significantly impact upon understandings of the role of horror in children and young people's lives. By bringing together scholars, teachers at all educational levels, and cultural managers from across disciplines and sectors through a series of events, the network will address vital questions about this frequently misrepresented relationship. The network activities have been designed to focus on four overarching themes, enabling the range of expertise and interests of our network members and partners to be fully utilised:

Archives: How have societal concerns about children, young people and horror been debated and represented in the media and public sphere in the past?

Memory: How and what do adults remember about engaging with horror in their childhoods and what can this tell us about the complex relations between children and horror?

Regulation: How is the relationship between youth and horror perceived today by adults who work with children and young people and/or who are involved in the regulation of their culture?

Education: How, if at all, is horror used in education, and what resources and information are needed to support the integration of horror into educational contexts?

While aspects of all of these themes will be addressed at every event, Archives and Memory will be prioritised at the first workshop with our partner Learning on Screen. This will enable all network members to investigate how existing archival material and audience research can be harnessed by the network to reconsider the history of public perceptions of youth and horror. In particular, the archival resource of Learning on Screen, the Box of Broadcasts platform, will be explored at this event as it allows unprecedented access to the way that the relationship between horror and youth has been debated in the media throughout history. These findings will centrally inform an exhibition, screening and audience discussion at the Midlands Arts Centre with our partners Into Film and Flatpack Film Festival. This event will also prioritise the themes of Regulation and Education by inviting intergenerational reflections on the framing and uses of horror for children through an audience discussion and survey. Through this, the network will provide a much-needed platform for a diversity of voices, including of children and adult guardians of intersectional backgrounds, and generate invaluable insight into existing perceptions of the role of horror in youth and how these have changed as a result of the network activities. This discussion will continue in our event with Into Film and the Recreational Fear Lab in Aarhus, which will enable a cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary dimension to be incorporated into the project, and essential collaboration to occur with Into Film on new educational resources. The network will end with an international conference, which will enable us to further consider the legacy of the network and how this will be captured on our project website and feed into future network contributions to Into Film events. As a whole, the network will identify pressing challenges, and create a range of resources to address them, so we can facilitate much greater understanding about the complexities of the rich and enduring relationship between young people and horror.