This research project explores how community visual arts practice can help young people flourish and connect with their communities despite adverse experiences they may have faced. The research focuses on socially excluded young people with disabilities and young people facing mental health challenges. It has included young people and other community partners in all stages of its design and they have contributed to writing the bid, particularly the collaborative arts activities statement. Young people and other community partners will also be fully involved in its delivery, building on previous collaborative research conducted and showcased on the community website boingboing.org.uk. The main body of this project involves a review of existing research data relating to these issues, drawing on the academic literature in the fields of resilience research, disablity studies, arts for health practice and geographies of health and impairment, and on what is known as 'grey literature' housed on community and policy websites. Expert advisory panel members' views will inform the framework for the literature review. There will also be an interim workshop with community arts practitioners and academics in order to report preliminary findings and pool existing knowledge; and case studies of planned visual arts interventions by community partners, focusing on disabled young people and young people with mental health challenges. The research will be conducted by an international interdisciplinary team of academics with expertise in the fields of disability arts, social exclusion, community health and resilience. These academics will work alongside resilience-focused and community arts organizations in the South East of England and community arts practitioners interested in enhancing the effectiveness of their arts practice. Impacts of the project will include: improving community arts practitioner and academic understandings of the links between arts practice, resilience and resilient communities; improving the lives of young people with mental health complexities and young people with moderate learning disabilities through the provision of community visual arts workshops targeted at fostering resilience; raising awareness of the creativity and talent of young disabled people (including their own interpretations of resilience) through a public exhibition of their art work and enhancing the effectiveness of future community arts for resilience interventions through the development of best practice 'visual arts for resilience' resources including a film.