FMP Week #7- Easter break update
We're not at college this week so have a chance to catch up on project work and also take a break! I am still running my wellbeing consultancy, so am blogging there and of course combining it with my creative practice. The latest blog is here , reflecting on some really wonderful talks I listened to yesterday whilst sorting collage materials out in my studio and updating my sketchbook for #strodefad.
They were by the Healing Arts London group and the first session had experts from the WHO, science, health, and Arts professions all talking passionately about the role that creativity has in wellbeing.
The – ‘Frame of Mind’ discussion included emotional testimony from Sir Anthony Gormley and Gillian Anderson about the healing power of Art, and in ‘Patterns in the Fog’ a discussion hosted by University College London’s (UCL) school of pharmacy, caregivers, patients, pharmacists and neurologists share how art can be used as a therapy to help patients and their families live with Dementia.
I learnt that the UK has set up a National Centre for Creative health in response to recommendations made in a 2017 report 'Creative Health: The Arts for Health and Wellbeing' made by the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Arts, Health & Wellbeing (APPG) .
The report presented the research findings , evidence-gathering and discussions with patients, service-users, health and social care professionals, artists and arts administrators, academics, people in local government, ministers, other policy-makers and parliamentarians from both Houses of Parliament over of two years and made 10 recommendations. This Infographic is part of a 'toolkit for creative health champions' that is free to download from their website to use in developing policies and strategies for partnership working across the arts, culture, health and wellbeing sectors to help deliver improved health and wellbeing in our communities.
There is also has a social prescribing network, of practitioners that I made contact with after the talks where NHS healthcare providers and commissioning bodies are linking with networks of creative practitioners to deliver some amazing socially engaged therapeutic programmes to deal with a whole range of physical and mental health challenges, and also to promote wellbeing instead of just treating symptoms.
This primary research has helped me refocus my project and really feel validated in what I am doing. The evidence base is so strong and the quantitative and qualitative methods of evaluaiton shared in the talks gave me ideas for how to present the surveys and subjective interviews I have been collecting for the project. It has also given me some focus on where I would like to develop after the foundation course as a creative wellbeing practitioner working to deliver socially prescribed creative activities- just imagine how much better we might feel if we were prescribed creativity instead of pills next time we felt under the weather?
