UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) have committed to a £348,000 investment in ten projects across the UK, from Kent in south east England to the Highlands and Islands in Scotland. Each of the projects will see researchers collaborating with communities to explore their lived experience of health and social care. This will help inform researchers, health practitioners, policymakers and the public about the future of care. Dr Mary Stewart, Heriot-Watt University and team have been tasked with capturing the learning across the cohort of projects.
The projects:
Professor Claire Cassidy, University of Strathclyde
This project will use philosophical dialogues to work with siblings of those experiencing life-limiting/life-threatening conditions to help understand their perspectives on wellbeing and care. The project will take a rights-based approach that will lead to a series of recommendations and advice for practitioners and families. The outputs, which include a leaflet, film, blog and podcast, will be co-created with the children.
Dr Bethan Evans, University of Liverpool
This project will work with women, trans men, non-binary, and gender nonconforming people with energy limiting chronic illness (such as Long Covid, ME/CFS, fibromyalgia, musculoskeletal and autoimmune conditions). Through artist-led creative workshops, people will be asked to imagine what better futures of health and social care would involve for themselves as they age, and for people diagnosed with these conditions in the future. The project will lead to policy briefings, briefings for GPs, and a toolkit of creative outputs (including a podcast and comic book, zines and creative writing) for use in education for health care professionals.
Making the invisible, visible: co-creating novel approaches to endometriosis pain communication
Dr Jasmine Hearn, Manchester Metropolitan University
This project brings together health psychology, linguistics, and art and design to engage members of the public living with endometriosis in the co-creation of novel approaches to communicating pain, collated into a pain communication toolkit. This project will involve collaborations between Manchester Metropolitan University’s Department of Psychology and School of Art, Arts for Recovery in the Community (ARC), Endometriosis UK, The Language of Endometriosis, and Helen Mather (an artist and educator with lived experience of endometriosis).
Professor Mary Stewart, Heriot-Watt University
Autistic people with learning disabilities are rarely at the forefront of developing service provision in social care. This collaboration between Heriot-Watt University, Scottish Autism, artists and autistic film-makers will employ creative methods to engage autistic people with learning disabilities in co-producing a vision of what happy and healthy ageing looks like for this group, and what kind of services they will require as result. The work will be used to raise awareness and provoke discussion with service professionals, policy-makers and the wider community in Scotland and beyond.
Rural Health and Care: Past, Present and Future
Professor Sarah-Anne Munoz, University of the Highlands and Islands
In this project, researchers, musicians and artists will work with community members to consider the history of rural health and care in the Highlands and Islands. Project participants will draw on their own memories, as well as archive and research materials, to address important issues, including:
- what health and care in rural and island Scotland should look like in the future
- what rural communities need from health and care services such as the NHS in coming decades
- in what ways the NHS needs to work together with social care and the community sector to deliver for rural communities
Professor Stephanie Snow, The University of Manchester
NHS 75/150 will engage diverse communities in Greater Manchester in discussions around the future of health and care. The project builds on an ambitious 5 year research programme on the history of the National Health Service (NHS) focused on answering important questions about experiences of health in postwar British everyday life and the place of the NHS. It will result in an art exhibition that will tour local communities, a programme of workshops and a health futures agenda
Empowering children to shape the future of research on social inequality and health
Dr Rachel Carroll, Teesside University
This project will design a programme of creative workshops for children living in areas of high deprivation in the South Tees region. Children will have the opportunity to express and communicate their perspectives on social inequality and health and wellbeing through a series of interactive and inclusive workshops. Their voices will be captured through anthologies of artwork and creative writing and short animated or documentary films. The Health Determinants Research Collaborative will then host knowledge exchange events, where the outcomes of the project can be shared with community-based researchers and public health leaders from across the region.
Re-igniting Windrush folk song and stories to improve African-Caribbean mental health disparities
Dr Myrtle Emmanuel, University of Greenwich
The project aims to explore how African-Caribbean (A-C) folk stories and songs from the Windrush generation can be re-ignited to support mental health and wellbeing of today’s A-C community in the UK. This work takes place within the boroughs of Greenwich and Lewisham since they have the fastest growing Caribbean communities in London and offer an opportunity to investigate these mental health concerns. The project will use folk stories and songs as a way into discussing cultural perspectives both, shared and unique generational experiences, to create a culturally appropriate mental health toolkit.
Imagining mental healthcare: engaging underserved local communities in Kent (INTERACT)
Professor Lisa Dikomitis, University of Kent
Anthropologists, psychiatrists, drama therapists and media scholars will ensure that members of Kent communities have an equal voice in the conversation around the future of mental healthcare and research. The INTERACT public engagement activities will maximise the involvement of mental health service users. Young people, new mothers, older adults, and migrants, recruited through the Kent-wide mental health trust KMPT, will participate in creative workshops, hosted at the Turner Contemporary, using ethnographic methods, to capture the lived experiences of community members. Insights will be disseminated through touring exhibitions, public talks, zines, podcasts, Tik-Tok videos, a policy brief and a journal article.
Home from Home: Building Independence in Community Health Settings
Dr Kim Wiltshire, Edge Hill University
Home from Home is an Arts & Health project that explores the intersection between hospital acute care and social care. The project team from Lime Arts will work with local community organisations from Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust, including both patients and staff, to explore the realities of community ward care. This will open up creative discussions about the experience of living and working on the four Manchester Community Wards identified. The project will then see artists, patients and staff come together to create artworks that will be part of a travelling exhibition, alongside a film about the project and the discussions arising from the artwork.