North West Arts and Health Network

Where is the VISION in Politics? - Artists in the NHS, Yayoi Kusama, Cultural Champions and more...

2012-02-13T12:13:00.000Z

WHERE IS THE VISION IN POLITICS?
Dementia is a burgeoning health issue, here in the UK and globally. We’re all familiar with the bullet-point ‘facts’, as peddled by the media and more recently by the reporting of neglect by the Patients Association and Care Quality Commission (amongst others). The National Dementia Strategy highlighted the pressing need to address the over-prescribing of anti-psychotic medication and the value of non-pharmacological approaches to dementia care services.

This agenda should be central to the public outrage at NHS reform! This is not just a health issue, this is a political issue. We should expect politicians from all parties to demand cultural change in the way our elders are cared for, particularly the most vulnerable. Where are the politicians who have vision? Where are the politicians who don’t just wait to defend the next policy, or react to media baiting? Where is the dynamic vision in 21st century politics? Step forward and engage. We are your allies and can help create change. Culture and the arts will be central to innovation across society, enabling 21st century well-being that is so much more than a passive acceptance of an intolerable future.

This is a call for a generational shift in the way we think about aging, and plan and deliver care for those who have been the bedrock of our country, its workers, families and free-thinkers.

I am thrilled to announce that Arts for Health will be working with colleagues from around the UK on understanding the impact and reach of the arts on Dementia and the Imagination, with funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council. More details of this will be available very shortly.

ARTISTS IN THE NHS - in pictures
To raise awareness of the devastating NHS reforms proposed by the health and social care bill, writer Niru Ratnam and Frieze Art Fair curator Sarah McCrory set up a new blog, Artists for the NHS, and have asked artists to make thought-provoking posters. Click on the Alistair Frost poster above.

THE MANIFESTO BEGINS ITS METAMORPHOSIS
And as the manifesto transforms from a pupa to a butterfly, here are a few reminders of part one’s content. (available in plain old black and white too)

YAYOI KUSAMA @ Tate Modern
The Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama has a retrospective at Tate Modern until 5th June. She’s an interesting person and there’s lots to read in the national press. For this blog, its her honest account of her mental ill-health that is interesting, which began in childhood when she started hallucinating the dots, nets and flowers which frequently appear in her paintings and sculptures. She voluntarily resides in a mental institution in Japan. An interesting interview with her from 1999 can be found at Bombsite, and here is a sample to whet your appetite.

Grady Turner There has been so much interest in your life story as a result of your retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art. Do you ever fear people may be interested in your biography at the expense of your art?

Yayoi Kusama No, I have no such fear. My artwork is an expression of my life, particularly of my mental disease.

GT We are conducting this interview by fax because you live in a mental institution in Tokyo. Is it true you committed yourself?

YK I was hospitalized at the mental hospital in Tokyo in 1975 where I have resided ever since. I chose to live here on the advice of a psychiatrist. He suggested I paint pictures in the hospital while undergoing medical treatment. This happened after I had been traveling through Europe, staging my fashion shows in Rome, Paris, Belgium and Germany.

GT Even though you are institutionalized, you are a prolific writer and artist. Where do you work?

YK I work at my condominium-turned-studio near the hospital as well as at a studio I’ve been renting for some years, which is just a few minutes walk from the hospital. I also created a large sculpture in the big yard of the hospital—a store-bought rowboat completely covered with stuffed canvas protuberances. I have made about five or six hundred large sculptures so far.

GT Do you still work around the clock for days at a time, as you did in the 1960s? Or is your work routine different now?

YK I work very hard even now, but probably not as hard as I did when I was in New York.

GT You say your art is an expression of your mental illness. How so?

YK My art originates from hallucinations only I can see. I translate the hallucinations and obsessional images that plague me into sculptures and paintings. All my works in pastels are the products of obsessional neurosis and are therefore inextricably connected to my disease. I create pieces even when I don’t see hallucinations, though...

Continued on Bombsite.

WHO IS YOUR CULTURAL CHAMPION
Arts and Business are inviting you to consider who you would like as a Cultural Champion. Below you’ll find advice as to what a Cultural Champion is and the types of support they are celebrating. If you would like to nominate someone, then please do go to http://artsandbusiness.org.uk or email peter.collins@artsandbusiness.org.uk or call 0121 248 1200 for further details.

A POEM for VALENTINES DAY
Looking at poetry in relation to the manifesto and stumbled upon work by Harold Pinter, who I naively only knew as a playwright. How blind! Writing an essay for another piece of work about how we die, I was exposed to the blistering piece by Pinter called, American Football (Please don't click on this link to this poem if your easily offened, or blind to the violence of war). For those of you who are interested in how artists respond to the politics of war, and where work is not embraced by the mainstream media, I recommend it to you. You can read it hear. American Football.
To celebrate all things valentine however, here is a short and sublime piece of writing by Pinter

It Is Here

What sound was that?

I turn away, into the shaking room.

What was that sound that came in from the dark?
What is this maze of light it leaves us in?
What is this stance we take,
To turn away and then turn back?
What did we hear?

It was the breath we took when we first met.

Listen. It is here.

NHS

2012-02-10T19:49:00.000Z

The Poet and Melancholic, Revolution, Film and Artists Commission

2012-02-06T13:39:00.008Z

The Poetic and Melancholic...

Just how on earth do we distill the key points of the manifesto into something we can utilize? - something we can brandish and be proud of? Here’s some of the beautiful work of poet and artist Robert Montgomery, whose work hijacks public advertising space.

FilmLife

FilmLife exists to capture the stories of organ donation and transplantation through the eyes of young filmmakers. We believe that more people need to be asking and knowing their loved one’s wishes, and we’re inviting passionate people to spark these conversations by creating films about organ and tissue donation. Whether you’ve been affected by organ donation directly or you’re keen to make your first steps into filmmaking have a lifesaving impact, we want to hear from you! Click on image for more details.

Las PINTADAS de la REVOLUCION

Revolution paintings. Graffiti and Arab public spaces

Casa Árabe inaugurates this exhibition which gathers more than a hundred images taken on the streets of different cities of Arab countries which during the last year were immersed in revolutionary processes. This exhibition gathers the popular creative protest expression through the use of public spaces, both in individual and collective initiatives. (click on image below)

Place: Casa Árabe’s exhibition rooms in Madrid (c/ Alcalá, 62).

Artsist Commission

Expressions of interest are invited to create a new public realm sculpture to be sited outside the new headquarters of the INSTITUTE OF MENTAL HEALTH, (IMH) on the Jubilee Campus of the University of Nottingham.

IMH are keen to ensure that there is artistic and public engagement with people who have experience of mental health difficulties, and that they are actively involved in the design and building process, so that the final work is inspired by issues related to mental health and one with a wide sense of ownership. As is now well-known, around 27% of the UK population will suffer from some form of mental instability in their life-time, and 3% will suffer from a serious and debilitating form of mental illness. successful candidate will lead an engagement programme with local mental health groups to develop the design, which is likely to be installed by early autumn 2012. A Fee of up to £23,000 is available, to include all design consultation, materials and installation.

To receive the full brief or further details, please email: victoria.tischler@nottingham.ac.uk or timharris1@ntlworld.com

Expressions of Interest are requested by 5pm on Fri 2nd March, 2012 (by email), to include your relevant experience of similar commissions, an outline budget, artist statement and your CV.

Mens health

In collaboration with MOSI and Manchester Mencap an exhibition will be opening to the public this week. We have spent the past year participating in a community psychology project aiming to improve the health of men labelled with 'learning disabilities' and to challenge the label of 'learning disabilities'. We have used a variety of visual and creative methods, which will be on show including photography, art, poetry, film, oral histories and debate. Click on photo above.

Asia-Europe Short Films Contest

The Asia-Europe Foundation invites young film professionals, students and enthusiasts to take part in the Asia-Europe Short Film Contest.

Short, up to 3 min films of any type - animation, documentary, fiction, mobile phone video – to reflect Asia and Europe’s connections of the future, the diversity and the interesting challenges, interactions of two regions, cultural differences or individual relationships.

Submit your short film before 9 April 2012 and you may be among the five winners selected by an international jury and online public voting. Winners will be flown to Singapore to take part in the Award Ceremony and will receive a 2-day filmmaking workshop from a renowned school of arts. SGD 5000 will be awarded for the first place winner. Click on logo above.

Thank You...C.P.

Arts Council funding, Clore Fellowships (Reprise), People's Health Trust and Poetry Please! (ohh, and the manifesto)

2012-01-30T20:41:00.000Z

So, here's the last sample of people's comments on the m a n i f e s t o for now. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading them, and that you know how to adjust your volume! Today see’s the thoughts of the President of the Society for Arts and Healthcare (SAH), Dr Gary Christenson, to whom, along with all those who've contributed, I’m incredibly grateful. Now it’s time to collate all the work together and publish part 2, which will be available far and wide.

People's Health Trust: Healthy Communities Small Grants Programme

This small grants programme makes awards of between £5,000 and £10,000 to local projects which help people live longer, healthier lives and address health inequalities. The Tust are particularly keen to support grassroots activities through their small grants programme, which is currently open in nine local society lottery areas. Funding will be available from other local society lotteries in the coming weeks and months, and local charities and community groups are urged to check the People's Health Trust's website for details. For more information, please visit www.peopleshealthtrust.org.uk

Arts Council England launches new fund

The Arts Council has launched a new £37 million fund to ensure more people living in places where levels of involvement are currently low, experience and are inspired by the arts. Over three years the fund will invest in around 15 programmes of activity that use radical new approaches to developing excellent, inspiring and sustainable arts experiences for communities not currently engaging with the arts.

The Arts Council has used the Active People survey to identify 71 areas of the country which fall into the lowest 20 per cent of arts engagement. Typically, grants of between £500,000 and £3 million will be invested in a number of these areas with the aim of increasing participation.

This programme is open to applications from any consortia that meet the eligibility criteria. All applications must be proposing work in one or more of the areas with the lowest 20 per cent of arts engagement as identified by the Arts Council.

There will be two funding rounds for applicants, with the first opening today. Interested consortia need to register their intention to apply with their regional office by 23 March 2012 with the closing date for the first round of applications 13 April 2012.

Excellence, both artistic and in engaging communities, will be at the heart of successful applications, with the Arts Council investing in programmes that encourage long term collaborations between local communities and arts organisations, museums, libraries and local authorities.

As well as increasing artistic participation in these areas, this investment will help the Arts Council learn about the impact of different approaches to increasing engagement. The knowledge gained from the programme will be made available to arts organisations, museums and libraries, local authorities and the wider cultural sector. Click on the logo below to get started!

Clore Fellowships

A reminder of the excellent opportunity of the Clore Fellowships...the clock’s against you, so don’t hesitate. Click on the money!

On the odd bit of poetry...

Why the pieces of poetry? In short, poetry wasn’t something that was part of my life as I was growing up, and over time (and out of the blue) it’s crept up on me, occasionally hitting me in the pit of the stomach, more often than not, explaining something I just haven’t quite understood. I think people reach out to it (or it to them) and find it more eloquent than they’d ever expect themselves to be, particularly at moments of heightened emotion; in times of love and death.

And if any of you want to share something, particularly if you’re from another country, with writers that I’ve never heard of, please feel free to email.

So here’s another Larkin; dark and from his later years. C.P.

Aubade

I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.
Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.
In time the curtain-edges will grow light.
Till then I see what's really always there:
Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,
Making all thought impossible but how
And where and when I shall myself die.
Arid interrogation: yet the dread
Of dying, and being dead,
Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.
The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse
- The good not done, the love not given, time
Torn off unused - nor wretchedly because
An only life can take so long to climb
Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never;
But at the total emptiness for ever,
The sure extinction that we travel to
And shall be lost in always. Not to be here,
Not to be anywhere,
And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.

This is a special way of being afraid
No trick dispels. Religion used to try,
That vast, moth-eaten musical brocade
Created to pretend we never die,
And specious stuff that says No rational being
Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing
That this is what we fear - no sight, no sound,
No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,
Nothing to love or link with,
The anasthetic from which none come round.

And so it stays just on the edge of vision,
A small, unfocused blur, a standing chill
That slows each impulse down to indecision.
Most things may never happen: this one will,
And realisation of it rages out
In furnace-fear when we are caught without
People or drink. Courage is no good:
It means not scaring others. Being brave
Lets no one off the grave.
Death is no different whined at than withstood.

Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape.
It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know,
Have always known, know that we can't escape,
Yet can't accept. One side will have to go.
Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring
In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring
Intricate rented world begins to rouse.
The sky is white as clay, with no sun.
Work has to be done.
Postmen like doctors go from house to house.

新年快乐, Lord Howarth on m a n i f e s t o, Manuwangku, Clore Leadership and a National Summit on Participatory Arts

2012-01-23T11:37:00.004Z

新年快乐恭喜发财新年如意

In this week’s m a n i f e s t o responses, we have some poignant political commentary from amongst others Lord Howarth and Mike White. Next week will see the last of these short films of reflective responses, and include comments form the President of the Society for the Arts in Healthcare. After this I will begin to draw together the salient themes for our second manifesto installment, which will be published in hard copy as an advocacy ‘tool’. Thank you for your inspiration. C.P

Music by Kronos Quartet, playing Bella by Barlight by John Lurie

MANUWANGKU - UNDER THE NUCLEAR CLOUD

As debate continues to rage (albeit quietly) about the risks of nuclear power, in light of Fukushima and Chernobyl, and in my own part of the world discussions to extend the Lake District National Park’s role as a global nuclear rubbish tip look even more likely, let’s look to a community whose voice has been routinely suppressed over the last 200 years. Yet another reminder, that if we are thinking about this arts/health agenda, we need to be more expansive.

Jagath Dheerasekara

Muckaty is situated on Warlmanpa country, 120 km north of Tennant Creek in the Northern Territory of Australia. Traditional Owners call the area “Manuwangku”. Nomination of their traditional land as a domestic nuclear waste dump site in 2007, coupled with proposals for Australia to “lease” uranium and take back radioactive waste from overseas nuclear power operations, have generated justifiable fear and concern amongst the Aboriginal communities in and around Muckaty (Manuwangku).

The exhibition, “Manuwangku, Under the nuclear cloud” is focused on this community under threat. Photographs by Jagath Dheerasekara, Curated by Sandy Edwards are online @ http://jd.photoshelter.com/index and (if you happen to be one of our Australian followers) on show at Pine Street Creative Arts Centre, 64 Pine Street, Chippendale, Sydney until 28th January

Clore Leadership Programme

Applications for 2012/13 Fellowships are now open and close 24 February 2012.

Since 2004, the Clore Leadership Programme has awarded over 200 Fellowships to outstanding individuals from across the cultural sector. Fellows come from diverse backgrounds, they may be working freelance or within organisations, both large and small, in areas ranging from archives to theatre production, and including visual and performing arts, film and digital media, heritage, creative industries, museums, libraries and cultural policy.

http://cloreleadership.org/page.php?id=48

In Our Times call out

Calling artists & others incensed by poverty & inequality. We need you to help us use art to expose the truth and galvanise action. Find out how to get involved in In Our Times. We’d love to hear your thoughts. How do you think art can best speak to people? How can it best incite action?

http://collective-encounters.org.uk/2012/01/in-our-times-call-out/

Because We’re Worth It: National Summit on Participatory Arts

22nd March 2012 (10am – 4pm: registration begins at 9.30am)

Cost: £15 per person (to cover minimum costs)

Venue: The Institute of Contemporary Arts, The Mall, London, SW1Y 5AH

Because we’re worth it! is an important national Summit exploring and celebrating the value of participatory arts. Participatory arts have the power to change people’s lives for the better; provide connections, experiences and rich stories. The UK’s participatory arts scene is constantly changing, innovating, developing, celebrating, exploring and recording fantastic and ground breaking work.

To book: www.eventelephant.com/becausewereworthit. For more information: 01254 674 777 or email hello@mailout.co

Kick up the fire, and let the flames break loose

To drive the shadows back;

Prolong the talk on this or that excuse,

Till the night comes to rest

While some high bell is beating two o’clock.

Yet when the guest

Has stepped into the windy street, and gone,

Who can confront

The instantaneous grief of being alone?

Or watch the sad increase

Across the mind of this prolific plant,

Dumb idleness?

Philip Larkin

from The North Ship, 1945

Simon Armitage on Manifesto Part 1, Consultation on Well-Being, Arts/Health Training...

2012-01-17T13:30:00.011Z

More feedback and comments for your delectation, with more to follow over the next two weeks. If the visuals on these films do nothing for you, don't worry as all the comments, critiques and developments will be shared on the blog alongside Part 2, which will be published in hard-copy too! Next week includes Mike White. Big thanks to Kamila Kasperowicz for her help with the design of Part 1 and Simon Armitage for reading and responding.

Deadline approaches (23rd Jan) to make the case for the impact of the arts and culture on wellbeing

Regular readers of this blog will know that on Thursday 7th April, (I blogged it HERE) I took part in a consultation event with the Office for National Statistics (ONS) at Bolton University called; Are the Best Things in Life Free? A Public Discussion and Debate. Alongside fellow panellists Dr John Howarth – (Expert on wellbeing), Gillian Halliwell – (Manager of £17m Big Lottery Wellbeing Projects), Reverend Canon Mike Williams – (Spirituality and Wellbeing) and Rachel Burke – (Bolton Lads and Girls Club), I took the position that creativity, culture and the arts have a significant part to play in the ‘well-being’ agenda. This event gave each of us the opportunity to make a ‘pitch’ for our area of interest and, we hope, influence the ONS.

The event was chaired by Carole Truman, Professor of Health and Community Studies at Bolton University, and an opening address on the ONS consultation process was given by Stephen Hicks, Assistant Deputy Director of the Measuring National Wellbeing programme, Office for National Statistics.

So, its with great frustration that I must report that the consultation makes no explicit reference to the arts, creativity or cultural activity impacting on well-being! This is an outrageous omission and I urge you to read the article in Arts Professional and follow the links below to respond to the consultation.

I suggest that Stephen Hicks revisits the notes of this consultation event, and that we contribute to this debate as a matter of urgency.

http://www.artsprofessional.co.uk/Magazine/view.cfm?id=6091&issue=246
The consultation document is at www.bit.ly/saqsrB
Download a consultation form at www.bit.ly/tiiy8M
Respond online at www.surveymonkey.com/s/QCRY8HS

(...remember, it is not a statistician that defines happiness, but the sentient human being)

Arts/Health Training Intensive 2012
Over May/June 2012, Arts for Health will be delivering training modules that offer artists the opportunity to refine their knowledge and practice within the arts and health sector. All sessions will be led by Clive Parkinson. For further details go to http://www.artsforhealth.org/opportunities/

Want to go on a Speed Date?
We've had lots of networking events at MMU and around the region, and as a one-off this spring, we're going to try something different: Speed Dating! have you something to share...a burning question to ask? Are you looking for collaborators...training opportunities? This will give us the opportunity to find out more about each other and ask how might we work together and grow?

Wednesday 29th February 6 - 8pm

(venue to be confirmed nearer the time)

So, it’s an experiment to give each of us a voice and will be how big, or small you decide. Want to be involved? Well don't be nervous. Think about what it is that you want to share and come along. Like all of our events, it will be informal and absolutely free. Let us know if you want to be involved by emailing artsforhealth@mmu.ac.uk before Friday 10th Feb

Alastair Campbell on Happiness, David Edgar on the value of the Arts, Field Music, Culture Shots and more...

2012-01-10T16:53:00.002Z

A constant stream of comments, thoughts and ideas have been coming in around part one of m a n i f e s t o, some of which are here for your delectation. All will be revealed over the next few weeks. Thank you EVERYONE. Please feel free to email any comments which must be received before 31st January.

BlueSCI and Field Music

Our friends and colleagues at BlueSCI were featured in the Guardian this week and to hear their collaborative work with Field Music and see the work of Arts for Health alumni Caro Inglis, you have until the 17th January to get to The Lauriston Gallery in Sale.

‘...happiness is all the more intense for knowing what it’s like to be utterly miserable.’ Alastair Campbell

A really interesting take on the ‘happiness’ debate that continues to fill the columns and obsess politicians, out for a quick hit. Alastair Campbell has written a book about his experience of clinical depression and the affect of his best friends death on his own understanding of what aspiration to happiness might be about. The book’s out on 12th Jan, but a good extract from it shows some considered thinking; that its not all about simpering positivism, but the grief, anger and depression that life throws at us, tempered by friendship and love (and some of those five ways+) that might add up to a life well lived and reflected on as we face our death. Click on the photo below for the extract.

Why should we fund the arts?

Publicly funded arts institutions are under more pressure than ever to quantify the social benefits they bring, as would be done for schools and hospitals. But isn't the crucial role of art to challenge the way society is run? An excellent article by playwright David Edgar. Click on the photograph below.

Dementia and Imagination with Claire Ford

I’m thrilled that the artist Claire Ford will be sharing reflections of her Churchill Fellowship at our first network event of 2012 on Thursday January 26th between 6:00 and 8:00pm (venue to be confirmed at MMU). As usual the event is free to our members, and will be informal. Claire spent 10 weeks in the USA exploring different approaches to dementia and the arts, and will be sharing this experience, her findings and ideas about future developments in the field. Thanks to those who’ve said they want to attend. Anyone who hasn’t yet expressed an interest, please get in touch by the 19th January. Venue will be confirmed by email one week prior to the event.

+Culture Shots

Museums and Galleries Week

Culture makes a difference. Experience it.

7 days
5 hospitals
70 creative workshops

6-12 February 2012

+Culture Shots is a week-long series of creative events run by museums and galleries in all five Central Manchester University Hospitals this February. From museum collections, music, film and photography to Wild food foraging, painting and the science of football, these unique sessions give you the chance to discover how culture can enhance your own life, your professional practice, and your patients’ health and wellbeing. www.HealthandCulture.org.uk

...and finally, although I know its a little overdone, the recent edit of the Great Dictator speech has been doing the rounds and is worth a few moments. Thanks, C.P

Fiction and poetry are doses, medicines. What they heal is the rupture reality makes on the imagination.

2012-01-01T00:04:00.001Z

(If you’re looking for the manifesto, please scroll down the page and there’ll be more soon)

‘Fiction and poetry are doses, medicines. What they heal is the rupture reality makes on the imagination.’ Jeanette Winterson

Looking through the newspapers over the last few days, I’ve been overwhelmed by the usual round up of ‘highlights’ of 2011: successes, failures, deaths and revelations. I’m still surprised how little is reported on the on-going crisis resulting from the tsunami in Japan in March.

How is the health and well-being of the displaced people around Fukushima, now that the Japanese government has increased the levels of radiation it is permissible and ‘safe’ for its citizens to be exposed to? Although barely noticeable in the printed media in the UK, counterpunch have provided some compelling detail, exposing the very real and enduring plight of people in Japan. What is particularly poignant, is the focus on women's voices, reminiscent of Greenham Common in the early 80’s, when 30,000 women held hands and formed a human fence around nine miles of the US nuclear missile base, and sung They Shall Not Pass.

The women of Japan sing a traditional song of remembrance and longing, Furosato:

Someday when I have done what I set out to do,

I will return to where I used to have my home.

Lush and green are the mountains of my homeland.

Pure and clear is the water of my old country home.

This year has also seen societal unrest on a scale unseen in a generation. Whilst focus in the UK media has been on the ‘Arab Spring’ and the unfolding crisis in Syria, the voices of school girls unbalanced the political system across Chile, resulting in a number of government resignations and questioning wider social inequalities. The voices of the young women of Chile cannot be ignored.

Closer to home, and less apparently sensational, the small print in the Guardian on 30th December revealed that antidepressant use in the England has risen by more than a quarter over the last 3 years. Prescriptions for anti-depressants rose from 34m in 2007/08 to 43.4m in 2010/11: an increase of 28%. Furthermore, in the North West we have the highest antidepressant use over 2010/11, with 7.2m prescriptions dispensed.

I have no doubt at all, that antidepressants offer critical respite from serious and debilitating depression, but we mustn't lose sight of some of the factors that impact on our mental health, and the current economic crisis plays a real part in this. Whilst counselling and talking therapies can help turn lives around, it is significant that as the government have increased their support for Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, this apparent treatment of choice is both time-limited and ‘measured’ in part, by the individuals’ ability to find employment/return to work. And we’re told that depression is costing the economy almost £11bn a year. I seem to remember the wonderful Dorothy Rowe telling the Un-Conference here at MMU in October, that guilt, blame and shame are all part of that complex baggage that erodes our well-being and can cause depression. (see Greenberg in recommended books for the big picture)

Doesn’t it seem like we’re in some horrible muddle, measuring our well-being...measuring our ‘happiness’ ad infinitum. The writer Jeanette Winterson sums it up perfectly, ‘...when money becomes the core value, then education drives towards utility...the life of the mind will not be counted as a good unless it produces measurable results.’

In her autobiography, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? Jeanette Winterson paints a picture of her life, originally fictionalised in Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit. It’s an enthralling read and one that I won’t spoil, but one in which we are given some very strong ideas about the potential impact of the arts on our well-being, and how as ‘meaning-seeking creatures’ in an increasingly secular world, we need to find ‘new ways of finding meaning.’ She also succeeds in blowing the myth, that poetry and prose are luxuries for the educated middle classes, suggesting ‘a tough life needs a tough language - and that is what poetry is. That is what literature offers - a language powerful enough to say how it is.’

In his report to HM Treasury, didn’t Derek Wanless suggest that evidence showed that one of the strongest determinants of health impact, wasn’t in fact, the reach of health services, but the female literacy rate?

I wonder how the people of Japan will describe this experience of being; will the actions of the young women of Chile go down in song, and how will we make sense of the here-and-now on our increasingly depressed little island? C.P

Thanks to Dr Nick Shimmin for sharing counterpunch; Professor Chris Williams of Pace University for his essay; the inspirational young people of Chile and Jeanette Winterson.

2011-12-25T18:40:00.000Z

Days

What are days for?

Days are where we live.

They come, they wake us

Time and time over.

They are to be happy in:

Where can we live but days?

Ah, solving that question

Brings the priest and the doctor

In their long coats

Running over the fields.

Philip Larkin 1964

Best things...manifesto and first networking evening 2012

2011-12-21T12:29:00.003Z

Just a couple of things for this last posting of 2011…

I want to give a big thanks to everyone who’s been supportive of Arts for Health over the last 12 months and wish you all the very best for whatever 2012 throws at us. On a personal note, it has been incredibly exciting to see people joining our supposedly ‘regional’ network from all areas of the globe! It’s wonderful to have lots of comments about the manifesto (part 1) too, some of which I will include in part 2 in January.

Work in progress from 1st session in Manchester...

If you haven’t sent thoughts or responses to me about the manifesto, but were involved in the process, I’d be really keen to hear your thoughts, or collect your comments before its next incarnation. So please send them to artsforhealth@mmu.ac.uk
I have collected some sharp, subtle and inspirational thoughts from people who were involved in the sessions, from those who weren’t but feel passionately, and from the wider world of Culture, Science, Politics and the Arts.

Dementia and Imagination evening
I’m thrilled that the artist Claire Ford will be sharing reflections of her Churchill Fellowship at our first network event of 2012 on Thursday January 26th between 6:00 and 8:00pm (venue to be confirmed at MMU). As usual the event is free to our members, and will be informal. Claire spent 10 weeks in the USA exploring different approaches to dementia and the arts, and will be sharing this experience, her findings and ideas about future developments in the field.

Final details of the venue and confirmation of places will be sent out one week prior to the event, but please drop an expression of interest in attending to artsforhealth@mmu.ac.uk before Thursday 19th January. Please enter Dementia and Imagination in the subject line of the email.

For now, my very best things to you...Clive

M A N I F E S T O and more...

2011-12-13T10:28:00.001Z

M A N I F E S T O Part ONE
Our manifesto is just as much about education as it is health; the arts as it is science, communities as it is the individual. Well-being is central to our vision. The arts are central to fulfilling our fundamental human rights.

this is not a quick fix
this is not about benign lumps of municipal sculpture
this is not about reducing the arts to a cost-effective prescription
this is about well-being
this is about democracy
this is about human flourishing
this is about new ways of understanding impact and value
this is about solidarity

Click on the image above to access full-colour, black and white and podcast versions. I'll be collating all comments and thoughts over the new-year.

NETWORKING EVENINGS at MMU
Please keep your eye on the blog for updates on three very special networking events over winter/spring 2012:

Stroke and the Arts
Dementia and Imagination

Fourth Culture

Response to the European Review Consultation

For those of you who were interested in the response to the European Review Consultation lead by Sir Michael Marmot for the World Health Organisation, emphasising the importance of creativity, culture and the arts in relationship to social determinants of health and health inequalities, please see the co-ordinated response from Stephen Clift, to whom I extend my thanks.

(Click on image below)

Experience of Creativity Questionnaire

Elaine McNeill from Liverpool John Moores University is undertaking a study that network members may want to contribute to.
The purpose of the study

This study is part of MSc in Consciousness and transpersonal Psychology and will look toward developing an understanding of personal transformation as an outcome of creative practice. As a participant you may benefit by gaining a deeper understanding of your creative practice.

Taking part

It is entirely up to you to decide whether or not to take part. If you do you will be asked to complete a 10-15min questionnaire online. You are still free to withdraw at any time and without giving a reason. A decision to withdraw will not affect your rights. The online questionnaire requires you to consider a time when you were being creative. The questionnaire should take approx 10-15mins. You may be asked to take part in an in-depth interview which will take 20-30mins, please leave a contact email address at the end of the survey. The interview will be exploring the aspects of the creative process discussed in the questionnaire.

The possible benefits include:

A greater understanding of creativity which could inform your studies/practice.

Confidentiality

As a participant you will have access to the final report and you may be quoted verbatim in future publications. However, your participation and contribution to this research will be kept confidential as you will remain anonymous in all information/data.

Please click on this link to access the questionnaire: http://www.survey.ljmu.ac.uk/ecq

The Two Wheeled Key to Better Health and a Better World
Thanks again to Cheryl G for another excellent info-graphic. Click on the graphic to go to the full document.

Is a Pizza a vegetable?

2011-12-07T13:24:00.000Z

Thank you SO MUCH for all the thoughts and comments on the manifesto part 1. Everything is valid and will be thrown in the mix for part 2. Sorry for my slow response if you've emailed me whilst I've been in Australia. I am back in the UK now and will be updating this blog in the manner in which you are accustomed to.

So for now, and to get us in the mood for all that 2012 offers, a question.
IS A PIZZA A VEGETABLE?
It appears that congress thinks so. Read on by clicking on the pizza!
Best things, Clive

m a n i f e s t o

2011-11-02T16:24:00.001Z

So here it is: m a n i f e s t o: part 1

It's been a while in the making and is the first of two parts.

A colourful version is available here alongside a straight black and white word version. A short animated film and podcast version will be available shortly.

I know that it's what some of you expected, because we’ve talked about it.

I know that it's not what some of you expected, because we’ve talked about it.

So respond to it, talk about it and share it, and we’ll get some of these thoughts into part 2 and see how it grows!

Thank you everyone who’s been involved.

And of course, I’ll give some presentations around it, and encourage some debate.

No more round-robins for November, whilst I am away at the 3rd International Conference for Arts, Health and Well-being, but there may be the odd conference posting if you have a moment to visit this blog.

Please post all comments around the m a n i f e s t o to artsforhealth@mmu.ac.uk and excuse the brief silence.

...and for those of you who haven't taken part in the process, it may be worth looking at the references first!

On Friday 7th October, the Marmot Review Team launched a consultation on the European Review of the Social Determinants of Health & the Health Divide in the WHO European Region. At the present moment, this consultation makes no reference to the role of the arts and creative interventions on health inequalities, and the time is right for our input. I will be making some comments on this consultation, but if you want to read more and contribute yourself, click on the logo above or follow this link:
http://www.marmotreview.org/reviews/european-review-of-hi/consultation.aspx

GMAHN Library and Website Launched...the Un-Conference and SO much more...

2011-10-28T12:44:00.000+01:00

Musique et Sante
The wonderful Musique et Sante who regularly work with our collegues at the Royal Northern College of Music, (RNCM) have developed their own website, which I recommend to you all. Partners and allies of the finest quality.
http://www.musique-sante.org/en

Bi-Monthly Networking Evening
(a change to our advertised programme)
I'll be 'out of service' for much of November, and instead of cancelling the networking evening planned for the end of the month, I'm thrilled that Holly at the RNCM has offered network members the opportunity to attend a talk on Music for Health as part of the RNCM Research Forum Series. It will take place on Wednesday 23 November at 5.15pm – 6.45pm in the RNCM Lecture Theatre and is entitled ‘Creating musical space in a medical place’. Holly Marland will be sharing insights into the role that music can play in hospital settings and the training and support that can be offered to musicians. There will be an opportunity for discussion and some informal networking in the RNCM bar afterwards. Places are limited so if you’d like to come along, please drop holly an email at holly.marland@rncm.ac.uk

An Evidence Review of the Impact of Participatory Arts on Older People
A very important contemporary review of arts participation conducted by the Mental Health Foundation.
http://www.baringfoundation.org.uk/EvidenceReview.pdf

Greater Manchester Arts Health Network Library
I am thrilled to be supporting the Greater Manchester Arts Health Network website which was formally opened last week. This on-line resource provides a fantastic one-stop-shop for some of the latest thinking, research and development in the field. Please check it out and in particular the extensive LIBRARY.
Fantastic work Anne and Phil.
http://www.greatermanchesterartshealth.org.uk/

Brief thoughts on the Un-Conference
Last Thursday’s Un-Conference was a (long) day of challenging, exciting and provocative debate and activity around our arts/health field. Divided into 4 themed sessions, the day gave the opportunity to participants to engage in 1 or more of the day’s events.

Langley Brown and Phil Burgess were quick to provoke and excite, getting people on their feet and active and using deeply personal stories of their own experiences as artists to question narratives and in part suggest, that its never too late to have a happy childhood.

Lynn Frogett and her team shared their psychosocial approach to understanding how the arts can change individuals and communities through theory and practice in an interactive workshop exploring how practitioners and organisations can evidence this.

Clive, Dorothy and Anne

Dorothy Rowe was utterly compelling and shared some of her thoughts on the myth of depression and its chemical origins, alongside notions of imagination. The repose to Dorothy’s session has been quite overwhelming.

                   Thought Provoking
                       Inspiring
                          Moving and concise

Mark O’Neil and Leisa Gray gave an excellent two-hander to round the day off, exploring the potential of museums and galleries to impact on public health at a population level, and a more intimate hands-on experience of literally handling objects. A perfect end to a wonderful day.

A Gentle Prod at those who take for granted...
The venue wasn’t perfect for the day, with some distracting noise from people working, and a couple of people complained there wasn’t food! I do have some sympathy about the ambient distractions, but for those demanding food…the day was free to all participants, and cost a fortune to host. So, no more greedy bleating please.

And finally a big thanks to everyone who made it possible.

Power, Older People, Australia, Young People, Drugs and St Perry of Essex

2011-10-17T12:03:00.000+01:00

Ai Weiwei tops the art world’s ‘power 100 list’…whatever that is! ‘His art activism has been a reminder of how art can reach out to a bigger audience and connect with the real world…Institutions, while they are really important, can be great tombs.’
Mark Rappolt, Editer, Art Review

How we value older people, the arts and the 'market'
I’m thrilled to be giving the opening key-note at the 3rd Annual Art of Good Health and Wellbeing International Arts and Health Conference, which is taking place at the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra between the 14 and 17 November 2011. I’ve written a paper which explores the role of the arts when we are faced with serious illness and which asks, in the face of our own mortality, just what relevance can culture and the arts play, if any. An article in today’s Gurdian chimes with much of the sentiment of my paper (see directly below)

The Hon Simon Crean MP Minister for Regional Australia, Regional Development and Local Government, Minister for the Arts, will be opening the conference and I’ll be giving my paper at around 6:15 on Monday the 14th, so if you want to hear it and get involved in our international debate, please come along.
http://www.artsandhealth.org

Illustration by Andrzej Krauze

NHS end-of-life care has been crippled by a marketised mindset that sees everything in terms of its economic value 'Our market-shaped way of life has no time for the elderly or the art of caring.' Madeline Bunting captures some of the outrageous issues affecting us all, around how we age; end of life care and the insidious ‘market led’ approach to ‘care.’
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/oct/16/market-no-time-elderly-caring

What young people are really thinking?
The Art of Protest is a pop-up exhibition organised that will take place in empty shops on Manchester's Market Street from 19 to 27 October. The charity Noise sent photographers Liam Carter, Sebastian

Heise, Lucia Zapata and Marta Julve out on the streets of Manchester, Madrid, Valencia and Berlin, to ask young people the question: 'What would make you protest?' Displaying the resultant images in an area hit by the recent riots is a powerful statement of disillusioned youth

To find out more go to: http://noisefestival.com/

Why Americans Pay So Much More For Brand-Name Drugs (and Canadians don’t)
Brilliant Graphics and another sharp commentary on the pharmaceutical industry from http://medicalbillingandcodingcertification.net/high-cost-of-rx/
…and a Big Thanks to Cheryl Godden

On the Secular Beatification of St Perry of Essex
I’m often asked if I’m after a ‘celebrity’ to be a patron of Arts for Health, and in truth, we’ve had some great people behind our work over the years including Lord Attenborough; Joan Bakewell; Melvyn Bragg and Sam Taylor-Wood, but the current obsession with fame and all its glories, has left a bit of doubt in my mind around publicity, for publicity’s sake. Much of this has been reflected by the vapid self-celebration of contemporary British art.

This said, I had an almost revelatory moment at the British Museum this weekend, in the exhibition by Grayson Perry: Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman, which I would recommend to anyone, particularly the people who ask, ‘what’s the relationship between arts and heath?’ I tend to open up a conversation about it being more than just a prescription...

Perry has produced something completely exquisite in his curation of artifacts’ from the British Museum and creation of his own work. I don’t particularly think he lays it on with a trowel either. It’s a beautiful show, with some challenging work that whilst exploring Perry’s own experience of being human, offers though the arts, far wider thoughts on being individual and part of a community. It’s not dumbed down in the slightest…if anything, he ups the ante.

Grayson Perry (b. 1960), The Rosetta Vase, 2011. © Grayson Perry. Courtesy Victoria Miro Gallery, London.

So on the basis of his enduring wit, cynicism and piercing beauty, I suggest some kind of secular beatification of Perry, and instead of approaching him to be a patron, he could be co-opted as our very own (and exquisitely flawed) Patron-Saint of the Arts.
http://www.britishmuseum.org/whats_on/exhibitions/grayson_perry.aspx
http://www.victoria-miro.com/artists/_12

An artists answer to the credit crisis…
Michael Landy’s Credit Card Destroying Machine was unveiled at the Frieze Art Fair last week. The huge Jean Tinguely-inspired contraption, pieced together from a random collection of found objects such as mannequin limbs and Mickey Mouse figures, is surrounded by tiny bits of shredded credit cards on the floor. In return for a drawing made by the machine that bears Landy’s signature, people have to hand over a valid credit card for shredding. An assistant feeds pre-signed sheets of paper into the machine and off it goes, with a marker pen attached to a metal arm doing an automated random drawing (you can choose the colour). Some 300 credit cards were shredded during the first day alone (including the private view). Landy, of course, is best known for shredding all his worldly possessions a few years ago. (Thanks to itsnicethat.com and Thomas Dane)
http://www.itsnicethat.com/articles/michael-landy-frieze-2011
http://www.thomasdane.com/artist.php?artist_id=7

...and for all of you eagerly awaiting Part 1 of the m a n i f e s t o for arts/health, I can confirm that the wonderful Kamila Kasperowicz has been creating a stunning digital and hard copy version for your delectation…

Chile: a World Summit on Arts and Culture and Student Uprising...

2011-10-10T12:19:00.000+01:00

Chile...a World Summit on Arts and Culture

The International Federation of Arts Councils and Culture Agencies (IFACCA) has announced that Chile would host the 6th World Summit on Arts and Culture in its capital, Santiago, on 13-16 January 2014.

This will be the first time that the World Summit has been staged in Latin America and will be presented in Santiago’s award-winning Estación Mapocho Cultural Centre. One of IFACCA’s most significant initiatives, the World Summit on Arts and Culture provides national arts councils, ministries of culture and other agencies with an opportunity to discuss key issues affecting public support for the arts and creativity. Previous World Summits on Arts and Culture has been held in Canada (2000), Singapore (2003), England (2006), South Africa (2009) and Australia (2011).

Provisionally entitled Creative Citizens: Technology and Culture for Diversity, the theme for the 6th World Summit will address the current context of globalisation and the challenges in the cultural arena, specifically in relation to safeguarding and protecting cultural diversity and cultural identities. New technologies in culture represent an opportunity to impact positively on the visibility and legitimatisation of cultural identities, to foster increased cultural diversity, and to enhance access, production and exchange of cultural goods. At the General Assembly, IFACCA also launched WorldCP, an international database of cultural policies [http://www.worldcp.org].
For further information please see www.ifacca.org

Hola hermanas y hermanos en Chile y la solidaridad de artistas y profesionales de la salud en el Reino Unido ...

Camila Vallejo on a march in Santiago held on the anniversary
of the Pinochet coup that toppled
President Salvador Allende in 1973. Photograph: Aliosha Marquez/AP

Chile...Girls Demand Free University Education

‘It was the most beautiful moment, all of us in school uniform climbing over the fence, taking back control of our school. It was such an emotional moment, we all wanted to cry.’ Angelica Alvarez 14

With the IFACCA announcement freshly ringing in our ears, its worth noting how a group of teenage girls kick started what is known in Chile as the ‘Chilean Winter’. There’s not been much in the UK press on this story, with our focus facing towards the ‘Arab Spring’, but here’s a synopsis.

A group of young girls have occupied Carmela Carvajal primary and secondary school for five months fighting for a single goal: free university education for all. The girls took a vote on their action too, with a 10/1 in favour of action, and their days are organised through a democartic voting system for managing all aspects of their lives, but their argument is simple; that education is recognised as a common right for all, not a consumer good to be sold on the open market.

This is part of a vast student uprising across Chile, with weekly protest marches gathering between 50,000 and 100,000 students. The girls are still having a rich education, supplemented by yoga and salsa and music gigs. There’s an excellent article on this story by Jonathan Franklin at:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/oct/07/chilean-girls-occupation-school-protest

So, with a World Summit on Arts and Culture and a democratic Student Uprising, lets hope that the IFACCA board see it in their remit to explore how culture and the arts are a force for social change, and if a core part of their agenda is about Creative Citizens and Technology, then this is potentially an exciting and provocative summit and one where our ever-evolving arts/health/well-being agenda is central.

And whilst use of facebook and twitter is being used as evidence of dissent in the UK resulting in lengthy prison sentences for those who advocate civil dissobedience, in Chile we can see how creative citizens have in fact harnessed this technolgy. Here are two links to the student leader, Camila Vallejo Dowling's blog and twitter...
http://twitter.com/#!/camila_vallejo http://www.camilapresidenta.blogspot.com/

Anyone Who Has a Heart is a light sculpture that displays your heart rate. It is a landmark and signature artwork sited at the entrance to the new Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital. The sculpture aims to catch attention through its form, textures and movement. giving a sense of fun and playfulness for all ages. Walking around the sculpture triggers sensors and changes the light display. Holding onto the stainless steel hand grips monitors your heart rate and translates that into a red light display synchronised with your pulse. It can also tell you the time as every hour, the sculpture turns into a clock. The sequence is explained on floor panels along with information about the heart rate of a range of animals.

It was commissioned by Lime in collaboration with the Central Manchester University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. This stunning work was made by artist Andrew Small commissioned through a special arts programme allocation from the hospital’s Charitable Funds.

What is Madness? - and so much more.

2011-10-04T13:34:00.000+01:00

Illustration by Clifford Harper/Agraphia.co.uk

What is Madness? This is the title of a new book by psychoanalyst Darian Leader, which was reviewed in the Guardian on Saturday 1st October. Whilst I haven’t yet read the book, it looks incredibly interesting and relevant to our field. The review was by Jacqueline Rose and made for interesting reading itself, particularly her discussion around the government sponsored ‘therapy of choice,’ Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT).

Rose reflects the Governments No Health without Mental Health and their commitment to evidence based therapy, which allows session-by-session outcome monitoring, predominantly measured by employment rates. Secretary of State for Health, Andrew Landsley, she notes, acknowledges that unemployment is a key factor in precipitating anxiety disorders and depression. You can see where this is leading I’m sure!

Joblessness is above 2.5 million and rising as a result of government policy, and it seems that,’ the government by its own account, is provoking the problem it is trying to cure.’

The article then eloquently discusses the commodification of humans and the emptying of our unconscious mental life. It’s a great article and one that I feel would benefit from an arts/health lens, but for me the question of what madness is, perhaps lies in the Joseph Heller inspired governance of our disconnected leaders.

See the review here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/sep/29/what-madness-darian-leader-review

Un-Conference 2011
Click here for more information about the free event at MMU on October 20th.
http://artsforhealthmmu.blogspot.com/2011/09/un-conference-eventthe-scottish-mental.html

Library Theatre Company & Cornerhouse are seeking:
Storybox Project Co-ordinator
£21,473 pro rata for 3 days a week (3-year fixed term contract)
Based: Manchester City Centre

We are looking to appoint a highly motivated, passionate and experienced individual to deliver an exciting and innovative arts workshop programme for older people living with Alzheimer’s & dementia.
http://www.librarytheatre.com/about-us/work-opportunities-and-casting/recruitment

Start2 (Change your life with Art)
Change your life with Art is an NHS service that is totally unique. Created by Start in Manchester with the support of the Strategic Health Authority and the Department of Health, it will be a collection of creative ‘courses’ with wellbeing themes, and that will encourage people to connect to the world differently, see their own strengths, be aware of their own stress triggers and have ways to handle that stress better – all through evidence based creative activities. Although it’s not launched formally until January 2011, you can get a sneak peak here and register for updates: http://www.start2.co.uk/

Lucy Sparrow

A Health Lottery...
Did you know about the new Health Lottery? No, not government policy, or our world famous post-code lottery, this is the one that gives a massive 20p of every pound you spend towards a good cause! The rest presumably goes to Richard Desmond, the 57th richest man in the UK and owner of Express Newspapers, OK, Television X and Red Hot TV.
A taste of things to come...?

Artist in Residence Opportunity
LIME are seeking two artists for a short term experimental residency project. This is a ‘paired residency’ scheme whereby each artist will work with a similar hospital department but in two hospitals, one in Bolton and one in Manchester.

Fee for each artist: £3,000 (including materials costs)
Application Deadline: Tuesday 11th October
Start Date: Week of 7th November

Full Details at:
http://www.limeart.org/ops.php

An Un-Conference Event...The Scottish Mental Health Arts and Film Festival and a Film from 1939

2011-09-28T15:50:00.000+01:00

I am thrilled to be hosting this event alongside Anne Crabtree and the Greater Manchester Arts Health Network and we have four very different and very exciting sessions planned...
An Un-Conference at MMU
20th October
Four seperate sessions focusing on:
8.45 – 11am
Changing Mindsets – the realities of artists engagement for mental health and wellbeing
Dr Langley Brown and Phil Burgess
An interactive ‘how to’ for artists to stimulate enquiry into the underlying skills and knowledge required to work within the health sector and raise awareness of best practice in mental health
For: artists, local authority arts, mental health promotion, charitable mental health or arts organisations, cultural organisations.
For more information or to register for this session only go to: www.changingmindsets.eventbrite.com

11.15am – 1.15pm
Understanding and Evidencing Transformative Practice
Professor Lynn Froggett, UCLan, with Alistair Roy and Robert Little
A research based psychosocial approach to understanding how the arts can change individuals and communities followed by interactive workshops to explore how practitioners and organisations can evidence this.
For: individuals and organisations working in arts, health, voluntary sectors, cultural or arts and health organisations with some existing experience of developing or commissioning arts and health.
For more information or to register for this session only go to: www.transformativepractice.eventbrite.com

1.45 - 3.45pm
Depression and Imagination
Dorothy Rowe
A talk and discussion exploring the myths surrounding depression , looking at how using your imagination can challenge negative inner beliefs.
For more information about Dorothy Rowe please visit www.dorothyrowe.com.au or www.dorothyrowe.com.au/blog
For: strategic leads, politicians, GP’s, managers and staff from public health , mental health, health improvement, local authorities, arts organisations, voluntary sector organisations
For more information or to register for this session only go to: www.depressionandimagination.eventbrite.com

4.00 - 6pm
Cultural Attendance and Public Mental Health
Mark O’Neill, Glasgow Life http://www.glasgowlife.org.uk/
Looking at the evidence for the health impacts of cultural attendance and participation and how it can be promoted as part of a public mental health strategy.
Leisa Gray from Manchester City Galleries http://www.manchestergalleries.org will lead a practical example of an object handling session.
For: public health and local authority strategic leads, museums and galleries, LA arts teams, arts organisations, mental health and health promotion leads, arts and health organisations, artists
For more information or to register for this session only go to: www.culturalattendance.eventbrite.com

If you have any booking queries please contact Events Northern Ltd on 01772 336639 or info@eventsnorthern.co.uk

SMHAFF FESTIVAL LEARNING PROGRAMME

The Scottish Mental Health Arts and Film Festival (http://www.mhfestival.com/) is now one of the largest arts and health events in the world with tens of thousands of attenders expected at almost 300 events taking place between 1-24 October. This year we have 10 provocative and entertaining learning events taking mental health and memory as their starting point.

In venues including The Citizens Theatre, Kelvingrove, CCA and Filmhouse, contributors include activists and community groups such as Oor Mad History and Voices of Experience, celebrities such as Elaine C Smith, former and current Chief Medical Officers Kenneth Calman and Harry Burns - and 10 universities, most are FREE, culminating in our international mental health film awards. The full event and booking details are in the document attached and it would be very helpful if you could promote these to your networks and members. www.mindreel.org.uk

Labour and Conservative Party Conferences; Networking; Dementia and Imagination and Some Thoughts on SOLIDARITY/αλληλεγγύη

2011-09-22T13:05:00.000+01:00

Over in the Red Corner; over in the Blue
Over the next few weeks, the North West will be hosting the Labour and Conservative Party conferences: in Liverpool and Manchester respectively.

So, what of it? These are days of knee-jerk politics, photo-opportunities and sound-bites. But, we’re also in the middle of a period of fundamental change which will see the NHS; Education; Culture and the Arts, and of course Public Sector reforms altered beyond recognition. Amidst this bleak landscape, we also see smart u-turns at the sight of public dissent. So when middle-England takes to the streets to demand continued access to forests and woods, they are offered compromise and salve. The NHS and public pensions are an altogether bigger beast, and whilst the looters who took to the streets this summer to stock up on their designer brands are accused of being vermin, those who oversold sub-prime mortgages and played the markets, remain invisible and very much, still in control. And those of us left competing for work and mortgaged up to the hilt with our keenly sold credit-cards and higher purchase lifestyles, are told we’ve been living beyond our means...a mainline drip-feed diet of temporal consumer caffeine.

Whilst we see an incredible expression of frustration and anger at political dominance and abuse across North Africa; neatly coined the Arab Spring, it seems this unrest is acceptable, because its happening under some outmoded dictatorship; somewhere hot and ‘other’. This sort of uprising in England’s Green and Promised Land would never happen, because we live in a democracy...and when we see Monsieurs Sarkosy and Cameron heroically shaking the hands of the free people of Libya; it reassures us, doesn’t it?
Anyway, we have these events; we have simmering civic unrest and we have our agenda for arts, health and well-being. Having some experience of pitching questions to MP’s, I wonder, what are the questions we would ask of the party leaders, if we had the opportunity? I’d very much like to hear your thoughts either online or emailed.

A starter might be around the widening inequalities gap and the potential of the arts bringing communities together: it could be around the broader social impact of the arts, perhaps as a vehicle for giving voice to potential (but apathetic) voters: what about non-pharmacological approaches to mental ill-health or dementia: it could be around social prescribing and social return on investment…or it might simply be about the value of the arts at the heart of 21st century life.

Go on…give it some thought and get back to me.

Networking evening
The next free event will take place here at MMU next Thursday 29th between 6 and 8. I’ll confirm details of the venue once I’ve had an indication if people will be attending or not and I’ll email this out next Tuesday only if you get in touch. I have no agenda for the evening and it will be free-and-easy and led by YOU.

Anyway, if you’re interested in sharing something and want to attend, please email me at artsforhealth@mmu.ac.uk

Dementia and Imagination
This is an exciting and growing field, and following ongoing work in Derbyshire, I am working with colleagues across the UK to develop a very exciting research programme around the impact of the arts on the sentience of people living with dementia and the communities they live in. More of that soon.

Time Slips

For now, I’d like to make an unashamed plug for the work of Dr Anne Basting from the University of Wisconsin, who I’d suggest, is delivering some of the finest work around the areas of healthy aging and dementia. Her new website Time Slips, comes on line this weekend and along with the other free resources she has made available, this must be some of the most groundbreaking work out there. The three links below are inspiring and quite unique:
            http://www.timeslips.org/
            http://www.penelopeproject.wordpress.com/
            http://www.forgetmemory.org/

From our own Correspondent
A big thanks to Anne too for her support of Arts for Health intern Claire Ford who has been awarded a Churchill Fellowship to learn more about arts based dementia activity in Milwauke and Washington and to Carrie McGee at MoMA. You can find out about Claire’s ongoing work at her blog: http://enrichinglifewithcreativeexpression.blogspot.com/

Word of the Week

                    SOLIDARITY

Solidarity is the integration, and degree and type of integration, shown by a society or group with people and their neighbors. It refers to the ties in a society - social relations - that bind people to one another. The term is generally employed in sociology and the other social sciences. What forms the basis of solidarity varies between societies. In simple societies it may be mainly based around kinship and shared values.

International solidarity is ''not an act of charity but an act of unity between allies fighting on different terrains toward the same objectives.''
- Samora Machel

''Unlike solidarity, which is horizontal and takes place between equals, charity is top-down, humiliating those who receive it and never challenging the implicit power relations.'' - Eduardo Galeano

''Solidarity is not a matter of altruism. Solidarity comes from the inability to tolerate the affront to our own integrity of passive or active collaboration in the oppression of others, and from the deep recognition of our most expansive self-interest. From the recognition that, like it or not, our liberation is bound up with that of every other being on the planet, and that politically, spiritually, in our heart of hearts we know anything else is unaffordable.''
- Aurora Levins Morales

''Solidarity does not assume that our struggles are the same struggles, or that our pain is the same pain, or that our hope is for the same future. Solidarity involves commitment, and work, as well as the recognition that even if we do not have the same feelings, or the same lives, or the same bodies, we do live on common ground.'' - Sarah Ahmed

More on Placebos for Art; the 'Love Arts Festival'; m a n i f e s t o and Enabling: Inclusive Arts Practice, for Public Health and Well-Being

2011-09-16T15:06:00.000+01:00

Enabling: Inclusive Arts Practice, for Public Health and Well-Being
11th October, Bolton Central Museum
Bolton Council Arts Development Service invite you to an event to promote inclusive arts practice for public health and wellbeing and to inform your future decision-making and development in this growing area of work.

In the current changing economic climate, with a move to the big society, localism bill, shared services, personalisation and opening up of services for commissioning opportunities, there is a need to equip organisations in the third sector, arts and creative industries with the knowledge needed to ensure they are able to keep up and exploit new opportunities to their fullest. The day will cover inclusive arts practice, how to be tender ready and win contracts in health and social care and how to navigate the emerging health commissioning process. Details and booking: http://enablingartsandhealth.eventbrite.com/

Placebos for Art...
The Behring Institute for Medical Research has been collecting placebos for Art.

Results

Midway through the course of this project, a special monitoring committee will examine the research for any significant discrepancies. In this type of research, the differences between the control group and the study group become visible only after post-study analysis. All participating patients must give their consent prior to participation; the study will comply with Dutch legislation for academic medical research on human beings and will be carried out according to the applicable international guidelines.

The Behring Institute has published the preliminary results of the Call for Placebos for Art in early 2011. This consists of a first attempt at grouping, categorizing, and defining the pieces, projects, paintings, pills, and installations.

Download the report by clicking on the image above...and make of it, what you will.

“Theatre and other art forms are a fantastic way to explore our complex responses to mental health issues and to encourage people to talk more openly. That’s why I’m supporting the Love Arts festival in Leeds”
Stephen Fry

Love Arts Festival in Leeds
27th September to the 16th November
Bring the arts and mental health together

http://loveartsleeds.co.uk/

With Ruby Wax, Phil Hammond, Jon Ronson, Arthur Smith and so much more.

But nearer to home, the m a n i f e s t o part one, nears completion...

A lovely piece of music for the weekend

Four Funding Opportunities; Theatre Submissions: Ai Weiwei in Salford and Startling Health Statistics from the USA

2011-09-13T11:51:00.000+01:00

Heart Research UK Healthy Heart Grants
Heart Research UK Healthy Heart Grants support innovative projects designed to promote heart health and to prevent or reduce the risks of heart disease in specific groups or communities. Grants of up to £10,000 are available to community groups, voluntary organisations and researchers who are spreading the healthy heart message.
http://www.heartresearch.org.uk/grants/healthyheartgrant

Winston Churchill Memorial Trust
The Trust provides funding for British citizens to travel anywhere in the world for between four and eight weeks, with the aim of gaining knowledge and experience that will enhance effectiveness at work and contribution to the community. Travel Fellowships are to enable men and women from all walks of life to acquire knowledge and experience abroad. In the process, they gain a better understanding of the lives and different cultures of people overseas and, on their return, their effectiveness at work and their contribution to the community is enhanced greatly. For more information visit: http://www.wcmt.org.uk/

First Light Movies
First Light Movies, which provides grants to projects that enable young people to participate in all aspects of film production, has announced that its Young Film Fund has re-opened for applications. Since launching in 2001, First Light Movies have enabled over 40,000 young filmmakers to write, act, shoot, light, direct and produce over 1000 films and media projects. The funding is available to organisations such as; schools; youth services; community and voluntary groups that work with young people aged between 5 and 18.
The closing date for applications is 2pm on the 12th October2011. For more information visit: http://www.firstlightonline.co.uk/fundingstream/young-film-fund

Graphic Thought Facility

The Wellcome Trust Arts Awards
The Wellcome Trust is inviting organisations and individuals to apply for funding through its Arts Awards. The Arts Awards support projects that engage the public with biomedical science through the arts including dance, drama, performance arts, visual arts, music, film, craft, photography, creative writing or digital media. Applications are invited for projects of up to £30,000 through their small & medium-sized grant programme. The aim of the awards is to support arts projects that reach new audiences which may not traditionally be interested in science and provide new ways of thinking about the social, cultural and ethical issues around contemporary science. The next application deadline for small & medium sized projects is the 28th October 2011. For more information visit: www.wellcome.ac.uk/Funding/Public-engagement/Funding-schemes/Arts-Awards/index.htm

Laced Banana
Laced Banana are accepting submissions for a new regular night dedicated to your NUTS*. Within the theme of mental health you have the chance to have your own writing performed on November 3rd at the Lass O’ Gowrie.
More information including guidelines and topics can be found on our website http://www.lacedbanana.co.uk/ *New Undiscovered Theatre Shorts

Ai Weiwei in Salford
If you're easily offended, look away now and thanks to CsI for this photo.

Startling Facts from the USA
...and finally thanks to Cheryl G for this link to another creative commons gem

Click on the image to go to the amazing (and disturbing) website...

...a few events on the horizon

2011-09-07T13:09:00.000+01:00

Hello again and welcome back to a very damp autumn. Just a few advance notices of events on the horizon.

A one-day conference on
Spirituality and Psychosis
at Liverpool John Moores University on the 10th November 2011

This conference will focus on psychosis and its relationship to spirituality, altered states of consciousness and unusual experiences and how these can be used constructively to facilitate recovery in people given a mental health diagnosis. Contributors are experienced in clinical practice and research, neuroscience and spiritual practices. The day will thereby provide a groundbreaking combination of practical ideas, new psychological understanding, opportunities for experiential work and lively discussion. This conference will appeal to mental health professionals, services users, carers and anyone seeking greater understanding in this rapidly developing area.
http://www.spiritualcrisisnetwork.org.uk/innerjourneys/

Arts 4 Dementia - Best Practice Conference
Royal Albert Hall, 14 November 2011

The Arts 4 Dementia Best Practice Conference will outline the constructive value and discuss the most effective means to bring artistic stimulation to people living with dementia in the community, to enable them to live better and longer in their own homes.
http://arts4dementiaconference.eventbrite.com/?ref=enivte&invite=MTIyMTc3OS9jLmdhcm5lckBtbXUuYWMudWsvMQ%3D%3D&utm_source=eb_email&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=invitenew&utm_term=eventimage

2 interesting dementia-related pieces of work from Collective Encounters

Now and Then (2010)
Now and Then was an innovative project which explored the impact of dementia on carers. The project involved substantial research with people with dementia and their carers in Merseyside and resulted in our Third Age Theatre company producing a 40 minute interactive theatre piece which was performed to health care professionals, health and social care students, at PSS’s Carers Convention and at the National Pensioners Parliament. The piece raised awareness of the challenging situation facing family carers and highlighted significant problems in relation to the health care profession.
http://issuu.com/collective-encounters/docs/now_and_then_evaluation

Live and Learn (2011 – 2014)
Live and Learn was developed arising from those findings, and through wider research internationally into the impact and value of creative work with people with dementia. This is a three year project funded mostly through Baring Foundation.Live and Learn will bring together third age volunteers with professional artists and dementia specialists to develop new models of creative reminscence to engage people with dementia. Crucially, these models will be ones that can be used by carers in their daily routines. Working both in care homes and in the community we will test new ideas and draw on international best practice; providing creative interventions for people with dementia and on-the-job training for professional and family carers. The project will also involve some performance work, with our Third Age Theatre company producing theatre to highlight the issues and articulate the stories they encounter through the process. We will also have a series of stakeholder events at which we disseminate our findings, share our ideas and facilitated debate with the wider community. The first event will be held on 2nd November and will involve presentations by David Clegg (whose work Ancient Mysteries was recently heard on Radio 4) and Karen Hayes, a poet-in-residence in several care homes and consultant on Live and Learn. The event will also launch Live and Learn and involve discussion around arts and dementia with stakeholders from the health, arts and social care sectors. If you would like further information please email info@collective-encounters.org.uk

And last, but not least:

Arts for Health at MMU

and

Greater Manchester Arts Health Network

present

An Un-Conference event

four separate sessions on 20th October 2011

http://artsforhealthmmu.blogspot.com/2011/08/event-news-flash.html

Guest Speaker at the Un Conference Event, Dorothy Rowe

Event NEWS FLASH...

2011-08-31T10:18:00.000+01:00

Arts for Health at MMU and

Greater Manchester Arts Health Network

present

An Un-Conference event

four separate sessions

on 20th October 2011

focusing on arts and culture for public mental health and wellbeing

with

Dorothy Rowe on Depression and Imagination

Mark O’Neill on Cultural Participation for Public Mental Health

Professor Lynn Froggett on Transformative Arts Practice

Phil Burgess and Langley Brown on Changing Mindsets - the realities of arts health engagement

at Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester

Within an overarching public mental health context, these four separate sessions will involve active participation to expand and develop arts and health practice and foster dialogue across the arts , health and voluntary sectors.

Each free session is aiming to engage different audiences from across the North West with a primary focus on arts and health in Greater Manchester. We do not anticipate delegates will attend more than one or two of the four sessions. If you do wish to attend more than one session you must register separately for each, following the relevant booking links. Places will be confirmed at the end of September.

Full details and booking can be found at: http://www.eventbrite.com/org/1413180499?s=5079931

Please note that Clive Parkinson and Anne Crabtree are not dealing with enquiries for this event. If you have any booking queries please contact Events Northern Ltd on 01772 336639 or info@eventsnorthern.co.uk

...and something to get you in the mood (for those of you who missed it last week)

Riots...Consumer Culture...Violence and RSPH Awards

2011-08-26T11:29:00.000+01:00

Bonjour à tous nos amis en France et bienvenue!

Amidst the bleakness of this social landscape, squinting all the while in the glare of a culture that radiates ultraviolet consumerism and infrared celebrity.

Hello again and welcome back. The year continues to progress with startling changes across society. There's been lots in the press about where we should apportion blame following the 'riots', but very little that links greed and consumerism. I was suprised to read article by Russell Brand that does make this connection and links the unfolding unrest to banking. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article28835.htm

m a n i f e s t o
The first manifestation of our ideas and passion will be published this September and just thinking about how our arts and health agenda is increasingly being affected by politics and affecting politics, its worth reminding ourselves of the way the arts question society. Syrian cartoonist Ali Ferzat, has this week, been seriously assaulted for his provocative work. Like Ai Weiwei and many that have come before them, artists give voice to this experience of being human. Like Augusto Boal, many have been imprisoned for enabling debate, some have lost their lives.

Ali Ferzat

Who Cares? Big congratualations to all those involved in the Who Cares? programme that has won the RSPH Arts and Health Practice and Research awards.
http://www.mla.gov.uk/what/programmes/renaissance/regions/north_west/news/~/media/North_West/Files/2011/Who%20Cares%20Report%20FINAL%20w%20revisions.ashx
http://newlightmanchester.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/whocares_final_midres.pdf

Away for a couple of weeks...

2011-08-04T20:04:00.000+01:00

Away on leave for a couple of weeks, I thought I'd leave a few thoughts from artists manifestos that might just have some relevance to our own time...

Aphorisms on Futurism

Die in the Past

Live in the Future.

WHAT can you know of expansion, who limit yourselves to compromise?

Mina Loy (1914)

Vorticist Manifesto

Beyond Action and Reaction we would establish ourselves.

The nearest thing in England to a great traditional French artist is a great revolutionary English one.

Wyndham Lewis and others (1914)

What is Architecture?

Painters and sculptors, become craftsmen again, smash the frame of salon art that is around your pictures, go into the buildings, bless them with fairy tales of colour, chisel ideas into the bare walls - and build in imagination...

Walter Gropius (1919)

First German Dada Manifesto

Art in it's execution and direction is dependent on the time in which it lives, and artists are creatures of their epoch. The highest art will be that which in it's conscious content presents the thousandfold problems of the day, the art which has been visibly shattered by the explosions of last week, which is forever trying to collect it's limbs after yesterday's crash. The best and most extraordinary artists will be those who every hour snatch the tatters of their bodies out of the frenzied cataract of life, who, with bleeding hands and hearts, hold fast to the intelligence of their time.

Richard Huelsenbeck (1918)

Draft Manifesto

Mankind is passing through the most profound crisis in it's history. An old world is dying, a new one is being born. Capitalist civilisation, which has dominated the economic, political and cultural life of continents, is in the process of decay...

John Reed Club of New York (1932)

Tentative ideas for a manifesto after 1 and 1/3 years at art school

There must be intercommunication. The genuine participating audience has been lost. Lack of audience reaction has been made a virtue. There must be a communal basis even if only from the artists themselves. Fragmentation and the perverted cult of individuality at all cost is a force which has rendered the artist impotent...The audience must become participators, the creators. The artist must abrogate his mystery.

Derek Jarman (1964)

The Foundation and Manifesto of Futurism

Standing tall on the roof of the world, yet again, we hurl our defiance at the stars.

F.T. Marinetti (1909)

Thanks to Alex Danchev's excellent 100 Artists' Manifesto

2011-07-27T11:26:00.000+01:00

It’s difficult to write anything meaningful following such a terrible event in Norway. So, a succinct blog this week, with no glib photographs.

ANOTHER BLACK DOG
Sane is celebrating its 25th anniversary this month and, to mark the occasion, it will be continuing the fight to beat the taboos surrounding mental illness by producing larger-than-life-size sculptures of dogs that its founder and chief executive, Marjorie Wallace, hopes will be sponsored by companies, schools and individuals and put in prominent positions up and down the country. Details at:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/jul/24/mental-health-black-dog-sculpture-campaign
http://www.sane.org.uk/what_we_do/black_dog/

Regular readers of this blog will know that DADAA are supporting the Black Dog Day Drop, and more details can be found at:
http://blackdogdaydrop.blogspot.com

MEASURING WHAT MATTERS
National Statistician's Reflections on the National Debate on Measuring National Well-being

I had the pleasure of sitting on a panel that was part of the Office for National Statistics debate at Bolton University this year, and so was excited to get first sight of the reflections on this national debate. Whilst there is no explicit sign of creativity, culture and the arts in this narrative as yet, it is important we stay connected with this ongoing process in the development of what the coalition government will see as a methodologies for measuring well-being (and understanding it).

Available in Welsh and English at:
http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/article.asp?ID=2718

PUBLIC COLLECTIONS FOR PUBLIC HEALTH: MUSEUMS, HEALTH AND WELL-BEING
A workshop
Wednesday 21 September 2011, 2pm-5pm Manchester Art Gallery

Much museum practice in the field of health and wellbeing has been to run projects with clinical health partners. The workshop will discuss how this work can be extended. We believe that the health promoting resources of museums can be made available to a broader but still targeted population through working with colleagues from public health and other fields.

Free but you need to book a place with k.athey@manchester.org.uk 0161 235 8825 We will confirm whether you have a place.
For further information contact m.trustram@manchester.org.uk 0161 235 8849

Potter v Murdoch; the Numinous; Networking Event; Arts and Mental Health diary date; BBC Radio 4 and Open Public Services

2011-07-20T13:48:00.000+01:00

ONE FROM THE GRAVE TO MR MURDOCH

Some of you may have heard me give a full version of my paper on the Big Society: Arts, Health and Well-being at the nalgao conference last year. In my presentation, I gave an account of the interview between the terminally-ill playwright Dennis Potter and Melvyn Bragg. I share this clip with you in light of the controversy over News Corp and the phone hacking ‘scandal’ (does it really surprise you?)and to remind us that Potter’s ideas are as relevant now as they were then.

On the NUMINOUS
Sveiki atvykę - mūsų skaitytojams Lietuvoje (Thanks to S)

A few months ago I heard the term numinous used in relation to nature and the arts; in particular as a way of describing that feeling we sometimes get when we’re moved by something that blows our minds, or in some way fills us full of awe. This sensation, which I’d suggest doesn’t happen often, when it does, is like really seeing something remarkable for the first time. It could be the beauty of a landscape that’s transformed by the right conditions (think: a giant silver ball of a moon; a cornfield gently swaying on the warmest of breezes; all the wonderful insect sounds of a mid-summers starry night, and the cool hand of someone you love in yours)1…or equally, that feeling of sheer exhilaration when you are immersed deeply in the climactic moment of a book, a film or a play when, oblivious to all others, a tear of pure tragedy or joy escapes your normally retentive eyes: symphonic bliss!

Sadly, this feeling escapes me all too often, and surrounded as I am by the trappings of consumerist superficiality, I frequently miss this temporal euphoria or sometimes, transient fear.2

In an engaging film of an un-moderated 2-hour discussion, Richard Dawkins and others debate, amongst other things, the possibility of differentiating the numinous from the supernatural and reclaiming it from its religious roots. This thing we feel, the sublime moment that exposes us to our sense of being, is typically seen as a gift from God. The twentieth century theologian Rudolf Otto divided the numinous into two parts: mysterium tremendum, which is the tendency to invoke fear and trembling; and mysterium fascinans, the tendency to attract, fascinate and compel.

Contemporary definitions define the numinous in relationship to a supernatural presence; the sublime; spiritual; sacred and transcendent. But if we are to understand the numinous in relation to the individual, isn’t it useful to separate the supernatural from the numinous? Is religion the only way of making sense of these rare and heightened moments?

Might it be that this experience is simply part of our neurology? –and if it is a heady mix of the social and the chemical, does removal of the supernatural diminish the meaning? I’m sure those of you who have dabbled in the illicit intoxicating world of Lysergic Acid Diethylamide may have an understanding of the chemically induced version of the numinous, as will those of you who have for other reasons, a fluctuation in your chemical balance. I think here, of our sometime giants of the arts world, who have been affected by precarious health and yet, have illuminated much of our thinking.

I’ve had the opportunity to share this notion of the numinous on my travels over the last few months, and responses to it have been varied, from dead-eyed incomprehension to complete recognition. For me, it’s useful for us to develop the ways in which we understand the reach of the arts and its occasional profound impact. Too often, the arts can be bland and prescriptive, offering mild distractions from our day-to-day reality, but once in a while, I’ll hear a story of an event, or moment that has had an overwhelming effect on an individual or group.

Last week, in what could have been a dull steering group meeting, a consultant in pediatric intensive care recounted the way in which the arts had rescued a young man from the darkest of suicidal thoughts, brought on by serious, life limiting disease. Through a moment of deep creative engagement, this young man had, had a lifeline thrown to him that had nothing to do with his illness; that transcended his frustration and fear, and illuminated the possibilities of life beyond the confines of sickness.

Did this young man have a numinous experience? – I have no doubt at all that he did. Do we have the evidence of this experience and its impact? – Of course not: that is the nature of our work. He wasn’t wired up to an EEG, ECG or a CT Scanner. Neither bloods, nor saliva were taken to scrutinize for raised levels of serotonin. And although a part of me would be thrilled to see those affirming areas of the brain sparkle and shine at moments of pure bliss, it would be an unnecessary health burden and entirely counter-intuitive.

Our semantics and the way we discuss the impact of the arts on health and wider society, means we should constantly explore what it is we believe and understand about our practice and its reach. By distinguishing the numinous from the supernatural, and articulating impact without making claims for miracles, we enrich our arts/health agenda.

1. Cheesy I know, but it is real and you do get the point?
2. Being driven by a friend across a desert the size of the UK in Central Australia, I woke from a slumber to whiteness as far as the eye could see. This vast, impossibly bright sand-scape was only punctuated by startling pillars of sand which rose high into the distant sky. I later learnt that these were part of a sand-storm heading in our direction. The experience was terrifying and exhilarating and the humbling product of the natural elements.

NETWORKING EVENT on THURSDAY 28th JULY

Due to circumstances beyond my control, the networking evening planned for next Thursday evening had been cancelled. Sorry for this, and normal service will be resumed as soon as possible!

ARTS, MENTAL HEALTH and WELL-BEING EVENT

Thursday 20th October,

Manchester Metropolitan University, Oxford Road

http://www.dorothyrowe.com.au/

This event is being planned between the Greater Manchester Arts and Health Network and Arts for Health at MMU and isn’t a day of passive listening day, but one of moving this agenda on through learning and action.

Confirmed speaker/facilitators include:

Psychologist, Dorothy Rowe on Depression and Imagination

Mark O’Neill (Glasgow Life) on Cultural attendance and Public Mental Health

We are currently discussing Artists input and Early Years input for the event, and will provide details shortly.

Please put this date in your diary, but remember putting this in your diary doesn’t guarantee you a place.

SIDE EFFECTS, BBC RADIO 4, SUNDAY 24th JULY

Written and Presented by CHRISTIE DICKASON

An Episode of Something Understood

At 6:05 am and 11:30 pm

(And for a week thereafter on BBC R4 'Listen Again' at any time!)

An intriguing exploration of the unexpected interactions of art and illness

OPEN PUBLIC SERVICES

White Paper published

The Government published its much anticipated Open Public Services White Paper this week which presses for radical changes to public services. New measures will see public services markets open up, users given more control, and the encouragement of innovation to drive better services for all, which will encourage a wider range of providers of many public services.

The paper has classified the delivery of public services into three categories: individual services, neighbourhood services and commissioned services, with power devolved to those levels, accordingly. Some of the main headlines so far include: proposals allowing communities to bid to run services, a legally enforceable “right to choose” services and proposals allowing for providers of some services to make profits for delivering results. The paper is extensive and covers a plethora of services across the country and, of course, forms part of the Government’s wider Big Society agenda.

In November the Government will set out how departments will put the principles into practice to open up public services over the parliament, including proposals for legislation. From April 2012 departments will publish regular progress reports on the steps taken to open public services.

There will be a listening period between July and September 2011. To add your voice click here. To read BBC coverage of the main proposals please click here

(Source: NCA News via Arts Development Ezine Issue 8)

‘To be shaken out of the ruts of ordinary perception, to be shown for a few timeless hours the outer and inner world, not as they appear to an animal obsessed with survival or to a human being obsessed with words and notions, but as they are apprehended, directly and unconditionally, by the Mind at Large – this is an experience of inestimable value to everyone…’

Aldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception, 1954

Networking, New Opportunities, the News of the World and Dance

2011-07-15T10:51:00.000+01:00

Mi hoffwn ddweud diolch yn fawr iawn wrth bawb yn Rhuthun a Chaerdydd roeddent oll mor groesawus. Mae'r gwaith 'da chi'n ei wneud yn anhygoel ac rwyf yn gobeithio y gallwn weithio gyda'n gilydd yn y dyfodol. Os y gallaf eich cefnogi mewn unrhyw fodd, yn enwedig i alluogi rhwydweithio rhwng pobl o'r un feddwl, yna cysylltwch a mi...Clive

ENGAGE
Over the last couple of years, I’ve had the pleasure of working with a range of people involved in museums and galleries and who see the potential reach of their work on well-being. Renaissance North West and the Museum of Modern Art in New York are two such organisations that are leading the way and I’d urge any of you not aware of their work to have a look.

This week I’ve been working with colleagues in Engage Cymru at the Ruthin Craft Centre and National Museum and Gallery in Cardiff on their excellent engage programme. As well as being inspired by the people and projects, I’m increasingly aware of the pockets of excellence that take place in diverse communities, that if I hadn’t had the good fortune to learn about on these occasions, I’d never know about.

And it seems when I meet these inspiring people/projects, they all feel that they are somehow, small-fry; not part of the bigger picture…and the truly exciting thing for me (with some bloated egos tossed to one side for a moment), is that these pockets of excellence are not only happening in Wales and England*, but all over the world. I’ve seen tiny projects in Australia as well as the big ones and recently heard visionary stories of work in South Africa and truly ground breaking work in communities in the USA.

I recently heard Mike White describe this movement as 'a small scale global phenomenon’, to which I am deeply indebted. This sums us up, doesn’t it?

The conversations I’ve had inevitably come round to training, finances and more often than not networking.

I for one, am really keen that our networking opportunities aren’t hampered by bureaucracy: language: egos or imaginary boundaries. Technology increasingly means that we can communicate with each other regardless of distance, and with our idiosyncratic google translator (to some extent), regardless of language differences too. So, do you want to network and explore some of these issues further and like me, do you think we can do this without being hung up on obstacles. Get in touch, make suggestions and lets explore what is possible.

*I don’t really need to tell you how much groundbreaking work’s happening in Scotland and Ireland do I?…just look at the Bealtaine Festival for a starter, or perhaps if your child is poorly the Royal Aberdeen Children’s Hospital might be conducive to a speedy recovery…or the Maggies Centre’s…the list in these two countries is endless.

ARTS AT THE HEART
For the latest copy of Arts Development UK magazine (formerly nalgao) go to:
http://artsdevelopmentuk.org/resources/magazine

MEDICAL NOTES
The Royal Northern College of Music are looking for an experienced evaluator for our Youth Music funded Medical Notes project at Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital. Please find all details in the attached brief. Deadline for the submission of expression of interest is Monday 1 August 2011 at 10am. Interviews will be held in the week commencing 5 September.
http://www.rncm.ac.uk/component/content/article/73/100.html

CHESHIRE DANCE
CALL for 10 Facilitators with teaching and training experience for PAID contracts

There are 10 exciting facilitator roles in this project, apply if you have:

Experience in facilitating specific community groups with different specialism’s
Experience creating work for and engaging with community groups
3 – 5 years of professional practice

10 facilitator contracts are available ranging from £2,500 - £4,500 (20 – 40 days, dependent on skills, experience / funding) Shadowing opportunities will also be available with this work.

Please e-mail info@cheshiredance.org or call 01606 861770 for an application pack and return this to us by 5pm Thursday 18th August 2011

Interviews will be on 24th and 25th August 2011. http://www.cheshiredance.org/

Whilst we're all keen to have a go at the Murdoch empire, don't we need to examine our own appetite for the salacious and popularist, fed by consumerism and the 'free market'? This new article by Christopher Hitchens examines our hypocrisy.

It took another dog to eat Murdoch’s dog
“It is Sunday afternoon, preferably before the war. The wife is already asleep in the armchair, and the children have been sent out for a nice long walk. You put your feet up on the sofa, settle your spectacles on your nose, and open the News of the World. In these blissful circumstances, what is it that you want to read about? Naturally, about a murder.” – George Orwell, Decline of the English Murder

...thanks Sally!!!

These '...characters, are consciously “slumming” it by picking up a newspaper that was intended for the less-literate elements of the proletariat. But for decades, in fact since well back into the mid-Victorian epoch, Britain’s News of the World was the winning formula for the depiction of crime and squalor and vice. The brilliance of the formula lay in its venerable hypocrisy; actually in two distinct kinds of venerable hypocrisy...'

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2011/07/13/christopher-hitchens-it-took-another-dog-to-eat-murdochs-dog

ON THE TRAIL OF THE BLACK DOG...

...but just where is it?

Nothing but our thanks...

2011-07-08T17:16:00.000+01:00

I have been overwhelmed by people’s responses to the Head to Head session last week at MMU. THANK YOU. In short, the event was superb, with 6 dynamic and exciting speakers sharing work of beauty, diversity and that challenged us. I want to say a big thanks to the speakers:

Mike White
Margret Meagher
David Doyle
Kate Wells
Ann O'Connor
Peter Wright

A great contribution from you all and I hope to share some of your presentations with participants from the event.

I have had a request from Peter Wright, who gave his card to someone at the event, only it had some notes on the back that he'd like! If you're the lucky owner of that card, could you get in touch with me directly?

As part of the Critical Mass events happening across the North of England, we also concluded the first stage of the m a n i f e s t o events and in between now and October, the meat is being put on the flesh. An especially big thanks to Ali Clough and Jay Haigh at the Looking Well in Bentham for launching this next phase so wonderfully last week.

Kabul Graffiti, Black Dog Day, Streetwise Opera and What's a Dying Man got to Sing About?

2011-06-29T14:04:00.000+01:00

Photograph: Omar Sobhani /Reuters

KABUL'S GRAFFITI GUERRILLAS

Subtle spraycan art attack on public spaces in capital is trying to prod Afghans into asking questions

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jun/12/kabul-grafitti-guerrillas-walls

BLACK DOG DAY

My black dog is not like any black dog it belongs to me and I live with it.
Once I thought it was very scary and I wondered what was happening to me to make me feel so sad and lonely, all alone. I spoke to a friend who I could trust with my inner most thoughts, and what a sense of relief.
It was not as scary as I thought it would be to open up and share my black dog moments.

The story is that today I am able to get through periods I call the black dog, surrounded with people who understand. People who may also have been touched by their own black dog.
I take each day as it comes and say to myself "feeling blue", "don't be scared" and "it will pass".
http://blackdogdaydrop.blogspot.com/

One Black Dog is lose in the North West. It could be in the hills, or it could be in the gutter. Keep your eyes open for it and report its findings.

STREETWISE OPERA
Fables - A Film Opera
Thursday 30th June at the Zion Arts Centre
http://www.zionarts.com/
I'm going to see this, and I can't wait

‘Streetwise Opera is something else. It teases, surprises, takes risks, and tackles the unexpected… it lures you where you haven’t been before and sends you home enriched.’ Independent

http://www.streetwiseopera.org/

What's a Dying Man got to Sing About?

An intesting awareness raising project by the Motor Neurone Disease Association http://alistairtheoptimist.org/

Blasting and Bombardiering...

2011-06-23T12:59:00.000+01:00

A National Alliance for Arts, Health and Wellbeing
A big thank you to everyone who came back to me with comments, ideas and suggestions around the REPORT on these national developments that were posted last month. I’ll be posting the slightly re-worked recommendations shortly and for now just wanted to tell you that at the meeting we agreed a few significant points. To avoid being London-centric, Chairing of the meeting will be rotational and undertaken by regional representatives. We are going to undertake a series of regional events to further stimulate debate and engagement and feed into a Charter for Arts and Health. This in part, will build on the groundswell of interest generated through the m a n i f e s t o work.

M A N I F E S T O
Having worked with a huge cross-section of people across the North West Region on the m a n i f e s t o, next week sees the coming together of lots of these ideas and the beginning of the next stage, where words and thoughts come together to influence action. I’ll be working closely with international visitors who are contributing to the process and particularly with Pioneer Projects at the Looking Well to transform some of our ideas into art forms.

Alison Clough (Jones)

Head-to-Head in Arts and Health
This free event is fully booked and you should have received notification of your place by now. Sorry to anyone who’s on the waiting list. A summary of the event will be put online.

Music in Hospitals
An exciting new concert series is taking place in these hospitals in central Manchester. It will showcase musicians from the Royal Northern College of Music and from Music in Hospitals. The concerts will take place on the first Wednesday of each month for six months from June 2011 within the various hospital atrium spaces between 11am -12.30pm. Please drop in at any time for a mid-week boost of beautiful live music! 6th July 2011 11am Royal Manchester Childrens Hospital Robin Sunflower Duo (Music in Hospitals) Harmonica & guitar. 3rd August 2011 11am Royal Eye Hospital Astrum Guitar Duo (RNCM). 7th September 2011 11am Saint Marys Hospital Oscar Bernhardt Ensemble, Charleston Charlies (Music in Hospitals). 5th October 2011 11am Royal Manchester Childrens Hospital Deli Babies (RNCM) The two RNCM musicians in residence at Manchester Childrens Hospital. 2nd November 2011 11am Royal Eye Hospital Kora Melody (RNCM) West African songs.
http://www.rncm.ac.uk/
http://www.limeart.org/

Pandemic, Outside In, Head to Head, Print Auction, Artists needed and a 'flawed passion.'

2011-06-15T14:44:00.000+01:00

Asia Europe Foundation...

Some of you will know that I’ve been involved with the Asia Europe Foundation exploring approaches to Pandemic Preparedness. Some of the work is emerging online which you can find here: http://asef.org/ebooks/public-health/scenarios/index.html

Outside In
2012 Launch Plans are afoot to release the Outside In open art competition for marginalised artists to the waiting world out there......We will be launching during the Spring 2011 and our ambassadors will be out there promoting the cause across the country during the year. If you want to be involved, if you are an artist or know of artists, if you would like to host an exhibtion, offer a workshop or just find out more - get in touch!
You can either email us: outsidein@pallant.org.uk or call: 07735568531 or to never miss a trick register for our bulletins: www.outsidein.org.uk/Events

Head to Head
Whilst the Head to Head event at MMU is fully booked, we are operating a reserve list for any cancellations that take place between now and the 30th.

On Thursday 30th June between 1:00 and 3:00 Arts for Health at MMU in collaboration with the Centre for Medical Humanities; Pioneer Projects and Open Art, will be hosting a once in a lifetime head-to-head, with some key international figures from the Arts and Health field. These include, amongst others Executive Director of Arts and Health Australia, Margret Meagher; Murdoch University's Dr Peter Wright; Executive Director of DADAA, David Doyle, Durban University of Technolgy's Professor Kate Wells and the Centre for Medical Humanities', Mike White. artsforhealth@mmu.ac.uk

UCH Macmillan Cancer Centre

Special Edition Print Auction in aid of the UCH Macmillan Cancer Centre http://www.uclh.nhs.uk/aboutus/Campaignsandcharities/UCLHCF/Documents/UCLH%20gallery%20catalogue.pdf

Anthony Burrill

Tim Joss, '...a story of flawed passion.'
I'd be interested to know peoples thoughts on this article.

Tate Liverpool and Mersey Care NHS Mental Health Trust Artist Recruitment
Tate Liverpool and Merseycare NHS Trust are seeking to recruit a specialist pool of artists/practitioners with at least three years experience in working within arts and mental healthcare settings. The artist will be expected to take on the role of facilitator/co-producer of the art works/interventions with service users, by working directly in consultation with adult and older adult service-users to inform and influence the design and outcome of future creativity and artworks. It is crucial that artists are able to work collaboratively and co-operatively with NHS professionals on and off site.

The next phase of activity will focus on environments as a theme and will involve transforming internal social spaces on the wards where service-users interact, socialise and eat. It is hoped that such interventions will alter the mood and feel of each space, encouraging service-users to exercise choice and control over their immediate environment. The theme of environments, (imagined, real and invented), will be explored through a devised programme of visual arts workshops that will take place within mental health care settings, but where appropriate service-users will be encouraged to visit Tate Liverpool.

Tate’s collections and special exhibitions will be used as stimulus/inspiration to inform the work, starting with Tate Liverpool’s summer exhibition ‘Magritte’ continuing with ‘Alice in Wonderland’ and ‘Turner, Monet, Twombly’ in 2012.

For more information and an artist’s brief please contact:
Alison Jones Tel: 0151 702 7454 Email: Alison.jones@tate.org.uk

The closing date for the return of applications is Thursday 30 June 2011 by 5.00 pm. Interviews will be held on Monday 11 July 2011.

Head to Head update; Case Studies; Boxed In; AfH Visiting Research Fellow and some thoughts on Melancholia

2011-06-05T17:41:00.000+01:00

UPDATE on the free Head to Head event at MMU on Thursday 30th June
This event is part of the Critical Mass events being delivered with partners at the Centre for Medical Humanities, Pioneer Projects and Open Art and is open to people across the Northern Region. As we have limited places and are oversubscribed, we will be allocating places in the order we received them. Please note that we hope to contact everyone who’s shown interest next week, with details of venue and time if applicable.
Thanks everyone for your interest.
http://artsforhealthmmu.blogspot.com/2011/05/arts-and-health-head-to-head.html

Call for case studies on how culture and sport have helped tackle the social determinants of health - Deadline Friday 17 June 2011
LG Improvement and Development is commissioning a further series of case studies on how services supported by local government can help improve health and reduce health inequalities by tackling the social determinants of health. This time the case studies will focus on culture and sport. So if you have any good practice examples of health benefits arising from social, economic or environmental improvements as a result of arts, museums, libraries, heritage, outdoor recreation, sport or leisure activity, we would like to hear from you.

We’re interested in changes in the various factors that determine people’s behaviour and act as barriers to healthy living. They could be improvements in early child development and education, employment and working conditions, the built environment, social inclusion and social mobility. Examples could range from culture and sport activity that improves health in the workplace, gets young people into education or enables the development of social skills and networks. As long as you have evidence that the changes in behaviour resulting from participation in cultural or sporting activity have led to improvements in health, you may have just what we’re looking for.

The purpose of the case studies is to show decision-makers the value of culture and sport to health and wellbeing, and encourage more commissioning of cultural and sporting activity.
Please send a short summary of your potential case study and contact details to angela@awatsonassociates.co.uk or call 01827 714733.

We’ll follow up the selected case studies in more detail in July.
SUBMISSION DATE: by Friday 17 June 2011
For case studies published last year including on regulatory, planning and transport services see http://www.idea.gov.uk/idk/core/page.do?pageId=17413136

BOXED IN at BLANKSPACE 20th-26 June
BOXED IN presents work from The Big Painting project by the Art to Life groups and other selected work from separate projects and groups across Manchester. Art to Life are weekly art and life skills groups for learning disabled adults from Manchester. During the week of the exhibition Art to Life groups will be holding their regular sessions in and responding to BLANKSPACE.

Click on the image below for more details.

Royal Society for Public Health
Arts and Health Awards
The Royal Society for Public Health Arts and Health Awards marking significant contributions to research and practice in the field of Arts and Health are now in their fourth year. Previous awards have recognised excellent work in the fields of music and health, arts and mental health and arts and health inequalities.

This year, the awards will recognise important contributions of outreach programmes undertaken by arts organisations (e.g. theatre companies, orchestras, opera companies, museums, art galleries, dance companies) to the wellbeing and health of their local communities. The award will recognize substantial achievements in:

Innovative initiatives undertaken by arts organisations to foster health and wellbeing in healthcare and community settings
Original contributions to research and evaluation focused on the contributions of music and arts organisations to health and wellbeing in healthcare and community settings

More details at:
http://www.rsph.org.uk/en/about-us/policy-and-projects/projects/arts-and-health-award-2011.cfm

Visiting Research Fellow at Arts for Health
I am thrilled to announce, that Dr langley Brown has been awarded a Visiting Research Fellowship at Arts for Health and he'll be dedicating much of his time to the huge Arts/Health archive. I'll look forward to people meeting Langley.
http://www.artsforhealth.org/archive

Networking, Dementia, Australia and a Breakthrough...

2011-05-27T11:23:00.000+01:00

Networking Evening
I just want to say a big thank you to everyone who came along last night and took part in this session. I really enjoyed the very animated conversation and am keen to take some of the ideas we discussed forward. For those of you who didn't attend the ares we really got to grips with were focused on the relationship between artists who work in the broad field of Arts/Health and colleagues in the Arts Therapy field. An outcome of this discussion will be to form a small group who'll pull together a statement that best encapsulates this relationship allowing for synergy and difference, but crucially, offering dialogue and mutuality.

We had some very passionate and interesting discussions around dementia and the arts and I'm sure all who came along last night would want to give a huge thanks to Zoe Keenan who shared her personal experiences around caring for her mum and her creative response to this experience. On the basis of this exciting work and suggestions form the group, we are going to explore some very interesting work in the region. I very much look forward to our next meeting and thanks again for everyone in making this such an enjoyable and inspirational evening.

Australia Calling
I am thrilled to be speaking at this conference. If you want to know more about it, or hear from Arts for Health Australia’s inspirational leader, please come along and meet Margret Meagher at the Head to Head here at MMU on June 30th (full details over the next two weeks). My paper this year at the Canberra conference will explore the relationship between Design, the Arts and Health with a specific focus on how the last days of our lives are often far removed than what we’d hope they might be like.

“The Aboriginal Memorial 1987-88, Ramingining Artists, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, photographer credit John Gollings

3rd Annual International Arts and Health Conference:
The Art of Good Health and Wellbeing
14 - 18 November 2011
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, ACT

The Art of Good Health and Wellbeing, 3rd Annual International Arts and Health Conference, will present best practice and innovative arts and health programs, effective health promotion and prevention campaigns, methods of project evaluation and scientific research. The 2011 Conference will continue to have a special focus on mental health and creative ageing, including programs for people with dementia and their carers; as well as workplace wellbeing programs; arts and health programs for Aboriginal communities; the built environment, design and health; medical education and medical humanities. http://www.artsandhealth.org/

Breakthrough: Art in Mental Health
Damian Hebron and Mike Farrer will both be speaking at Breakthrough’s third ARTS in Health Event:
‘Where to Next…?’
Location : NHS North West, 3 Piccadilly Place, Manchester
Date: 10th of June, 2011. 9:30-3pm
http://breakthroughmhart.com/

Towards a National Forum for Arts and Health Many of you will know that I sit on a group that has been looking at the notion of a National Forum for Arts and Health, following the collapse of the NNAH in 2007. I’ve been working with colleagues around the country to explore ways forward, and the linked report has been made by the external consultants Globe to help inform this direction. I would be grateful for any thoughts on this linked document, which I will feed into the forum at our next meeting. http://www.artsforhealth.org/resources/final_national_forum_report.pdf
If you would like me to email a copy of the SUMMARY REPORT, please email me directly.

Job opportunities, and an Opera

2011-05-19T13:46:00.000+01:00

Fables – A Film Opera
VENUE: Zion Arts Centre, Hulme (screening and live theatrical event)
DATE & TIME: 30th June, 7-8pm

Step into a magical world of legend and folklore with Streetwise Opera’s Fables - A Film Opera, a group of four short films interspersed with live performance and theatre, created by some of the UK's leading composers and filmmakers working with 125 Streetwise performers who have experienced homelessness. Composers Mira Calix, Emily Hall, Orlando Gough and Paul Sartin/Andy Mellon, and filmmakers Gaëlle Denis, Tom Marshall, Flat-e and Iain Finlay have created short films based on traditional fables ranging from the classic The Boy Who Cried Wolf to Shinishi Hoshi's contemporary tale, Hey! Come on Out!

This special event at Zion Arts Centre is part of the fringe Not Part of Festival, and involves a screening of the films, around which there will be live performance and theatre created by director Emma Bernard and led by a sizzling folk musicians. They will be joined by Streetwise Opera’s award-winning singers from the Booth Centre in Manchester, the ICC in Nottingham and narrator Neil Allen. The evening will include some rousing opera, folk, hidden performers and uplifting audience participation.

More details HERE.

Arts and Health Practitioners required for exciting dementia project in Merseyside http://www.collective-encounters.org.uk/

m a n i f e s t o update and much, much more...

2011-05-11T10:20:00.000+01:00

Head to Head
In my last blog posting, I told you a little about the free event on June 30th that will see a host of international figures from the arts/health world, sharing some of their practice and engaging in conversation. I’ve been overwhelmed by the response and it looks like it will be fully booked well ahead of the event. I have to reiterate that I can’t guarantee anyone a place yet, but thanks for the emails. I will confirm places/agenda/venue/times at the beginning of June.

Towards a National Forum for Arts and Health
Many of you will know that I sit on a group that has been looking at the notion of a National Forum for Arts and Health, following the collapse of the NNAH in 2007. I’ve been working with colleagues around the country to explore ways forward, and the linked report has been made by the external consultants Globe to help inform this direction. I would be grateful for any thoughts on this linked document, which I will feed into the forum at our next meeting.
http://www.artsforhealth.org/resources/final_national_forum_report.pdf

Networking evening
I’m discussing with a number of network members, the possibility of the next session here at MMU on the evening of 26th May, being an opportunity to share ongoing work, frustration, needs and ideas. The simple idea being that a small number of artists/health practitioners get in touch with me if they’re interested and on the evening, they can share what it is they’d like to discuss…then we can pitch in with constructive criticism and support. This could be really helpful to all of us and I’m pleased to say that the artist Zoe Keenan is happy to share some of her work around dementia and young people who find themselves in the position of being a carer. Zoe has produced some really exciting work around this and would be happy to share it and get feedback.

Anyway, if you’re interested in sharing something, or if you just want to attend, please email me at artsforhealth@mmu.ac.uk
(Venue details will be emailed next week)

M A N I F E S T O update
Since the first session last September, just under 400 people around the region have contributed to the emerging m a n i f e s t o and over May and June we’ll be holding the last sessions of the first stage of conversations. In June, I’ll be working with colleagues from all over the North West and others from as far as Durham, Yorkshire, Australia, South Africa, Ireland and the USA, who’ll all be feeding into the discussion. The final event of 2011 will be at MMU in September…then, we go public! Don’t forget, we’ll be getting some high-profile input into the m a n i f e s t o from the art, media, health sectors too, but the core of this work is about our shared vision. On the 9th May I facilitated an event in Cumbria that was over-subscribed. As usual, if you wanted to contribute but weren’t able to attend, please get in touch via email. And for the 3 people who left comments in my ‘composting thoughts bag’ in Cumbria, a particularly big THANK YOU. Your comments will feed into the mix and I really liked the illustrations too.

m a n i f e s t o on Prezi

Arts and Health: Head to Head

2011-05-03T14:36:00.000+01:00

SIYAZAMA PROJECT

On Thursday 30th June Arts for Health at MMU in collaboration with the Centre for Medical Humanities; Pioneer Projects and Open Art, will be hosting a once in a lifetime head-to-head, with some key international figures from the Arts and Health field.

These include, amongst others Executive Director of Arts and Health Australia, Margret Meagher; Murdoch University's Dr Peter Wright; Executive Director of DADAA, David Doyle, Durban University of Technolgy's Professor Kate Wells and the Centre for Medical Humanities', Mike White.

This event will offer participants the chance to hear about some global exemplars in arts and community health and research, and take part in a discussion and networking session.

This event is free and places are going to be limited. It is likely that it will take place between 3:00 and 6:00.

Tim Maley Exhibition DADAA

To register your interest (which does not guarantee a place), simply email artsforhealth@mmu.ac.uk with your name and subject line reading HEAD TO HEAD. Although priority will be given to North West Arts and Health Network members, this session will have a number of places open to colleagues from further afield.

Confirmation of a place will be provided in early June, as will fine details of the event including agenda, time and venue.

Office for National Statistics Consultation on Well-Being...

2011-04-08T14:24:00.000+01:00

On Thursday 7th April, I took part in a consultation event with the Office for National Statistics (ONS) at Bolton University called; Are the Best Things in Life Free? A Public Discussion and Debate. Alongside fellow panelists Dr John Howarth – (Expert on wellbeing), Gillian Halliwell – (Manager of £17m Big Lottery Wellbeing Projects), Reverend Canon Mike Williams – (Spirituality and Wellbeing) and Rachel Burke – (Bolton Lads and Girls Club), I took the position that creativity, culture and the arts have a significant part to play in the ‘well-being’ agenda. This event gave each of us the opportunity to make a ‘pitch’ for our area of interest and, we hope, influence the ONS.

The event was chaired by Carole Truman, Professor of Health and Community Studies at Bolton University, and an opening address on the ONS consultation process was given by Stephen Hicks, Assistant Deputy Director of the Measuring National Wellbeing programme, Office for National Statistics.

Whilst I’ll make brief reference to them, I can’t aim to cover all the speakers’ contributions here, but want to give a taste of what I crammed into my far-too-brief 5 minute overview; some of the questions raised and some thoughts that didn’t have time to be aired.

An exhausted Clive tries in vain to keep his fellow panellists riveted.

It was significant that Stephen opened the session by framing well-being as being more than the subjective ‘happiness’ that seems to be the flavor of the month, and he gave a definition of the ‘dynamic’ nature of wellbeing that would be typified in the new economics foundation definition;

‘Well-being is most usefully thought of as the dynamic process that gives people a sense of how their lives are going, through the interaction between their circumstances, activities and psychological resources or ‘mental capital.’1

He went on to outline the coalition governments commitment to better understand of well-being and how it can be ‘measured’, expressing a clear understanding that subjective measurements of well-being fall outside the traditional ‘market model’. John Howarth talked about the intensity of work and family commitments and its impact on work/life balance. Gillian talked eloquently about the importance of personal resources in dealing with the stresses of life and the importance of positive social relationships.

Mike talked about faith communities as being ‘gold-mines’ of resources for community well-being; a point I’d agree with, but in my opinion he over-egged the point that well-being and spirituality are inseparable and can only be achieved through a belief in God. For me his comments about the ‘myth of the happy poor’ could warrant a full debate in itself, particularly when one considers the doctrine of some organised religion that places an emphasis on suffering in this life to gain eternal salvation. Rachel gave a full and rounded picture of the very real impact of the work of youth work and sporting activity on the well-being on children and young people as an investment in tomorrow’s citizens.

For my part, I used a number of stories in an attempt to paint a picture of how the arts/cultural engagement can impact on individuals and communities, by opening up new opportunities and offering a means of transformation. Here I’ll make reference to the points I made, and some I didn’t have opportunity to expand on.

Because this was a public event, I spelt out some clear messages: that this agenda went beyond murals on hospital corridors and that I was not a therapist, but grew as an artist within a tradition of community and participatory arts.

I shared the story of a man marginalised by learning disabilities in a long-stay hospital I worked at in the 1980’s, and how the arts enabled him not only to express his individualism, but impose some order on his chaotic life. For me, this was a significant stage in my understanding of the transformative impact of the arts.

Making sense of this individual story in relationship to wider community impact, I shared research findings from the Invest to Save: Arts in Health Project2 which illustrated not only the reduction in symptoms of ill-health, depression and anxiety in the participants of robust arts/health projects; but the increased well-being, evidenced through environmental mastery, autonomy and social connectedness. In fact, much of what are commonly referred to as the 5 Ways to Well-being3.

I discussed the range of questionnaires used, but emphasised the importance of story in making wider sense of this work and talked briefly about the importance of the arts/health community getting better at telling a richer story, of how we create value. I wanted to stress the importance of both longitudinal studies in the field, as well as embracing some of the ideas posited by John Knell and Matthew Taylor around Contingent Value and Social Return on Investment4; a point I later laboured with Stephen, and one that should be taken seriously by the ONS and the coalition government. These are areas that I would be keen to explore with partners in the field.

I spent some time equating the reported rise in anti-depressant prescribing in England over the last four years by over 40%, with consumerism and the pathologising of our day-to-day anxieties and worries, in our bid to be ‘happy’, and as Pascal Bruckner observes, “unhappiness is not only unhappiness, it is worse yet, a failure to be happy.'5

Whilst the World Health Organisation tell us that over the next 20 years, depression will become the single biggest burden on society6, I see some of the social and economic issues affecting society, married with our blind faith in well-marketed pharmacology, as contributing to high levels of social disconnectedness and isolation.

Previous editor of the BMJ, Richard Smith comments, ‘More and more of life’s inevitable processes and difficulties—birth, sexuality, ageing, unhappiness, tiredness, and loneliness —are being medicalised, and we are growing the budget of health care to tackle them. But medicine cannot solve these problems, and…I believe…that the humanities can help us with a problem as pressing as that of attitudes to death (and) climate change. Scientists have long identified the problem, but we have failed to act effectively– largely, I believe, through our evolutionary flaws of selfishness and lack of imagination.’7

I did find time to describe yet another story of people whose lives had been turned around through organizations like START in Salford8, that not only give people a sense of community and pride, but through challenging art experiences give opportunity make informed choices and flourish.

If time had allowed, I would share some of the remarkable work that I’m engaged in with Derbyshire Community Health Services, where we have evidenced astounding changes in the lives of people affected by dementia; where again, engaged in challenging art activity and not soporific reminiscence, we have evidence sentience in a number of people, who’s prognosis is in itself, the biggest discriminator. On the basis of this early work, we are embarking on an action research process to better understand this remarkable affect of the arts. And this work is not about finding a magic-bullet cure, but is focused on the quality of our existence in our later years.

Darren Browett

It is here we must strive to develop more than statistical analysis of our findings and marry the numerical data with real stories to affect cultural change in the way we perceive aging and dying, and how we care for growing numbers of people affected by dementia.

It seems that the backlash to current NHS reforms has encouraged the coalition government to enter a ‘listening exercise’, and I hope that the arts are seen as a valuable way of exploring issues around health, education and well-being. We know that the arts contribute hugely to the UK economy and according to a DCMS report in 2008 the creative industries employ 2 million people in Britain and contribute £60 billion to the economy each year, 7.3 percent of UK GDP.9

Sceptics of the arts/health agenda still call for a cold measurement of impact, holding up the Randomised Controlled Trial as the ‘gold standard’. Stephen and the panel seemed to agree that measuring well-being is far more subtle than this, and I illustrated how the figures can be manipulated, citing an article in the BMJ that showed drugs manufacturer Pfizer, chose to hold back back 74% of patient data from the clinical trials of the antidepressant Reboxetine, that showed that it is, ‘overall an ineffective and potentially harming antidepressant’.10 As Jonah Lehrer in Proust was a Neuroscientist quips, ‘…measurement is always imperfect, and explanations are easy to invent.’11

I’m not going to suggest that it’s wrong to attempt to measure well-being, or indeed the way that the arts may, or may not, contribute to this agenda. I’d go so far to say that statistics, and what we can garner from mass observations, are incredibly useful to society and knowledge. What I’d like to do though, is raise the level of this debate and the profile of our work. We observe that the arts connect people; encourage activity, learning and imagination, and through active engagement with high quality arts experiences, there is the potential to impact on public good and civic society.

The participatory arts offer us potential to flourish as humans and I urge us all to think less about illness, and disease and more about salutogenesis; the focusing on the factors that create health and well-being. I suggest to you that the arts offer us all, a way of making sense of the world, communicating our aspirations and facilitating change.

Please feed your comments into the Office for National Statistics, Measurement of National Well-Being @ http://www.ons.gov.uk/well-being

1. www.neweconomics.org/publications/measuring-well-being-in-policy
2. www.miriad.mmu.ac.uk/investtosave
3. www.neweconomics.org/projects/five-ways-well-being
4. www.thersa.org/__data/assets/pdf_file/0011/384482/RSA-Pamphlets-Arts_Funding_Austerity_BigSociety.pdf
5. Perpertual Euphoria: On The Duty To Be Happy, By Pascal Bruckner
6. www.who.int/mental_health/management/depression/definition/en/
7. http://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2010/12/30/richard-smith-medicines-need-for-the-humanities
8. http://www.startmc.org.uk
9.http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/+/http://www.culture.gov.uk/Reference_library/Publications/archive_2008/cepPub-new-talents.htm
10. http://www.bmj.com/content/341/bmj.c4942.full
11. http://www.jonahlehrer.com

News, Views and Opportunities...

2011-04-07T13:33:00.000+01:00

Health Innovation Challenge Fund (UK)
The Department of Health and the Wellcome Trust are inviting proposals from organisations and research groups seeking to draw on funding from the Health Innovation Challenge Fund to further the development of innovative healthcare products, technologies and interventions, and to facilitate their development for the benefit of patients in the NHS and beyond. The theme for this funding round is Smart Surgery: Innovative technologies or interventions to reduce, replace or refine invasive surgical procedures. Up to £10 million is available to organisations such as NHS organisations (including NHS Trusts and NHS Foundation Trusts), and equivalent UK authorities; universities, and research institutes and not-for profit organisations; start-up companies founded to capture and develop intellectual property of relevance to healthcare; and biotechnology, pharmaceutical, bioinformatics, engineering or other companies; etc that will deliver ‘Smart Surgery’ solutions that will translate into safe and cost-effective practice into the NHS. The deadline for submitting preliminary applications is 5pm on the 28th April 2011. For more information visit: http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/Funding/Technology-transfer/Awards/Health-Innovation-Challenge-Fund/index.htm Fund/index.htm

Artist to work with Arts for Health group for Culture Shops
The Arts for Health service are looking to run two eight week creative courses. The courses run weekly for two hour sessions. The artists will need to have experience of working with adults suffering with mental health difficulties. The artist would work with the Arts for Health group to produce work which would then be exhibited as part of the Blackpool Culture shop programme, whereby work is displayed in an empty shop in Blackpool. The first course would be April- June 2011 and second course to be June-August 2011. Details at: http://www.artsjobs.org.uk/index.phpid=25&ne_source=dailyjobs&ne_post_id=59238

Arthur and Martha

An Interesting Project to Watch
Arthur and Martha engagement project with older people in St.Helens.
Over the course of this week the Arthur and Martha are working in diverse settings such as the local health centre, library and bingo group... These initial pilot taster sessions will shape how we move forward from this period and develop the activity. As well as delivering the project Arthur and Martha will be blogging about the work and I thought you would be interested in being kept up to date on how the project is progressing.
The link to the blog can be found here:
http://arthur-and-martha.blogspot.com/2011/04/comfort-smell-waft.html

Knowledge Lives Everywhere
Arts and Health week 2 - 8 June 2011
Do you work with arts and health? Are you an individual or an organisation with something to contribute to the new FACT exhibition Knowledge Lives Everywhere? Throughout this exhibition there are themed weeks being held in Gallery 2, programmed by FACT collaborators and guests. We would like to hear from you if you work within arts and health and have a film you would like to screen (or suggest a topical film), give a talk, do a performance or wish to have a change of scene and hold a meeting in the space! Do you have any burning issues surrounding arts and health you wish to communicate to the world via a webcast? We will try and accommodate your content and ideas. Please use this opportunity to put the spotlight on arts and health during an exciting exhibition which celebrates all things creative and collaborative! We look forward to hearing from you. If you are interested in taking part please contact Angy or Kat on 0151 707 4416 or waiting@fact.co.uk
http://www.fact.co.uk/about/exhibitions/2011/knowledge-lives-everywhere

Reading for Wellbeing: The Reader Organisation’s Second National Conference
Tuesday 17th May 2011
Floral Pavilion, New Brighton, Wirral
“Get Into Reading helps patients suffering from depression in terms of: their social well-being, by increasing personal confidence and reducing social isolation; their mental well-being, by improving powers of concentration and fostering an interest in new learning or new ways of understanding; their emotional and psychological well-being, by increasing self-awareness and enhancing the ability to articulate profound issues of self and being.”
‘Therapeutic Benefits of Reading in Relation to Depression’, Billington et al., 2011
Further details at http://www.thereader.co.uk/

Music & wellbeing: Making Music Conference
10 – 11 September 2011, Glasgow
The impact and application of music to improve mental, physical and social wellbeing has many advocates and well-established initiatives demonstrating positive impact. Making Music will be looking at programmes taking place across the UK and the opportunities these create for voluntary music. http://www.makingmusic.org.uk/events/conference

Arts in Health – a new prognosis
In this article, our friend and colleague Mike White looks at how the arts community can adapt and respond to changes in healthcare provision and organisation. In recent years the arts in health field has acquired the expertise to address a wide spectrum of medical, health and social care issues. It has the resilience and resourcefulness to weather the impending health service reforms in an era of austerity. But it will need to adapt conceptually and in delivery to healthcare environments in which patient choice, GP commissioning power and a new public health workforce are the drivers of change.
http://ixia-info.com/new-writing/arts-in-health-%E2%80%93-a-new-prognosis-mike-white

Thursday Night Film Screening at MMU

2011-03-28T09:01:00.000+01:00

FILM EVENING
This Thursday evening at MMU in room JD CO-14 in the John Dalton Building (opposite the BBC see linked map building number 11 http://www.mmu.ac.uk/travel/maps/mmu_maps_allsaints_aytoun.pdf)
Starting 6:00 prompt till 8:30.

The Lost Generation Project is about finding the lost stories of people with intellectual disabilities, many institutionalised for most of their lives. It is about hearing these stories and recognising and celebrating people who have traditionally been socially isolated and aims to assist these people to connect to their communities through arts and culture. The Lost Generation Project has found unique people from across Australia and provided them with the technology and skills to tell their stories on film. Each core project participant or storyteller is offered the opportunity to make a short film that tells their story.

Simone Flavelle is the Manager/Executive Producer of this project and she will be giving us the opportunity to see some of these films and engage in a discussion.

To register for this event, email artsforhealth@mmu.ac.uk There will be a small charge on the evening of £2.00 on the door to cover costs for this event.

Thank you to all those who have registered so far.

Details of this work and 5 films are available to view on line at: http://www.disseminate.net.au/lost_generation_project_2

IT'S A RAP

Now I'm not sure whether this is the true public face of Arts and Health...but I can certainly see the connection! MC NxtGen and a take on NHS 'reform'. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dl1jPqqTdNo

DATE FOR YOUR DIARY:
Thursday 30th June: International Arts and Health HEAD to HEAD (part of the Northern Uproar and m a n i f e s t o events)

Details of this unique event at MMU (which will offer members of the North West Arts and Health Network the opportunity to meet key figures from the Arts and Health field from the UK, USA, Ireland, South Africa and Australia) and will be advertised shortly.

Please note at this stage we are not able to take reservations, but details will be posted on the BLOG asap.

MoMA the Arts and Dementia

I have just returned from an intensive period of activity with the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York exploring synergies between the arts and dementia as part of an action research programme I am undertaking within an NHS trust between 2011-2015. A report relating to this work will be available via Arts for Health shortly alongside a dedicated BLOG. Thanks to Carrie McGee at MomMA and Dr Anne Basting at the University of Wisconsin.

BIG SOCIETY (a good read)
Arts Funding, Austerity and the Big Society: Remaking the case for the arts John Knell and Matthew Taylor
http://www.thersa.org/__data/assets/pdf_file/0011/384482/RSA-Pamphlets-Arts_Funding_Austerity_BigSociety.pdf

AND FINALLY...
Recent weeks have seen much action towards the m a n i f e s t o, with events in Cumbriia planned...more details soon…

2011-03-10T13:56:00.000Z

Are the Best Things in Life Free?
A Public Discussion and Debate

What matters most to you in life? If we wanted to measure wellbeing - what things should we include? These and other questions will form the focus of a stimulating public event which is being hosted by the Centre for Research for Health and Wellbeing at the Univesity of Bolton on Thursday 7th April at 4pm. The event will include a panel of experts who will make a pitch for the things they think play a role in wellbeing - and there will be lots of opportunity for the public to participate and join in the debate. The discussion and arguments will be fed back to the Office of National Statistics who have been asked by the government to devise a measure of national wellbeing.
Further details at http://www.bolton.ac.uk/CRHW/News/Articles/ONS030211.aspx

Breakthrough are delighted to announce that they are holding another Arts in Health Event in Manchester on Friday the 10th of June, 2011. We are keen to build on the momentum generated from previous events, using the setting as a way in which to promote positive practice, showcase the talents of service users, bring people and ideas together and to work towards developing a unified, national strategy for moving forwards. It would be great to have you involved!
Please visit the website http://www.breakthroughmhart.com/ or get in touch via breakthrough@mentalhealth.freeserve.co.uk

The Triangle Trust 1949
Fund Opens for Applications (UK)
The Triangle Trust 1949 Fund is currently inviting applications from charity organisations to support projects that support:

Carers
Community arts and education
Disability
Older people
Poverty
Integration and rehabilitation

Grants are normally in the range of £1,000 and £10,000. The objectives of the Fund are; the alleviation of poverty and the promotion of good health and welfare; the advancement and furthering of education. Successful projects will either maintain an open, inclusive society or promote integration (or reintegration) of individuals or groups into society. Preference will be given to smaller charities; charities which serve a locality or region of the UK, rather than national charities; and causes which find it more difficult to raise funds from the general public. The next application deadline is the 14th May 2011. For more information visit: http://thetriangletrust1949fund.org.uk/

Two Exhibitions at the University of Salford
Wed, 30 March 2011 to Sat, 30 April 2011
Ghislaine Howard: The Choreography of Walking

Personal experience drew artist Ghislaine Howard to the subject of walking: from charting the first hesitant steps of her children, to watching the determination and courage of her mother refusing to accept the debilitating progress of Parkinson’s disease. Central to this exhibition is the work Ghislaine has done in conjunction with the University of Salford’s Podiatry Department, which increased her wonder at the extraordinary choreographies of walking. “The simple act of putting one foot in front of the other - so natural it seems for most of us, so hard won for others.” http://www.ghislainehoward.com/

Venue: Chapman Gallery, Chapman Building, University of Salford, M5 4NT
Opening hours: Tuesday - Friday (12-5pm), also open Saturday 2 April & Saturday 30 April (12-5pm). The gallery will be closed on Bank Holidays Friday 22 & Friday 29 April.

Sarah Coggrave, Bronwyn Platten and others...: Mouths and Meaning
Tue, 24 May 2011 to Fri, 24 June 2011

Bronwyn Platten & Sarah Coggrave: Flumpy (2010) & Untitled (2010)

Mouths and Meaning is a research project and exhibition developed by Bronwyn Platten, towards her PhD based in the School of the Built Environment, the University of Salford. The focus of Mouths and Meaning is to explore and creatively represent experiences of embodiment, food and eating by those who have been affected by an eating disorder. Using a multisensory, holistic and interdisciplinary approach the exhibition will showcase a range of new works including photography, film and sculpture developed by Sarah Coggrave in collaboration with Bronwyn Platten; a selection of individual works by both artists as well as a series of drawings by workshop participants from England, Scotland and Australia.

Bronwyn’s studentship has been funded by EPSRC as part of the collaborative, multi-institutional Health and Care Infrastructure Research and Innovation (HaCIRIC), IMRC Centre, the School of the Built Environment, the University of Salford.
Venue: Chapman Gallery, Chapman Building, University of Salford, M5 4NT
Opening hours: 12 - 5pm, Wed to Sat
Preview/launch event: Tuesday 24 May, 6-8pm (free admission, everyone welcome!)

Exclusive DADAA Film Screening and Call for Papers

2011-03-04T10:36:00.000Z

The Lost Generation Film Project (DADAA Inc)

6:00pm to 8:30pm, Thursday 31st March 2011
At Manchester Metropolitan University

This is a unique opportunity to experience the work of DADAA and thanks to Durham University’s Centre for Medical Humanities, who have supported this event.

The Lost Generation Project is about finding the lost stories of people with intellectual disabilities, many institutionalised for most of their lives. It is about hearing these stories and recognising and celebrating people who have traditionally been socially isolated and aims to assist these people to connect to their communities through arts and culture. The Lost Generation Project has found unique people from across Australia and provided them with the technology and skills to tell their stories on film. Each core project participant or storyteller is offered the opportunity to make a short film that tells their story.

Simone Flavelle is the Manager/Executive Producer of this project and she will be giving us the opportunity to see some of these films and engage in a discussion.

To register for this event or get more details, email artsforhealth@mmu.ac.uk There will be a small charge on the evening of £2.00 to cover costs for this event.

Thank you to all those who have registered so far. Confirmation of places and details of venue will be provided 1 week prior to the event.

Details of this work and 5 films are available to view on line at: http://www.disseminate.net.au/lost_generation_project_2

CALL FOR PAPERS

Striking a Chord
Music, Health and Wellbeing:Current Developments in Research and Practice

Date: 9th-10th September 2011
Venue: University Centre Folkestone
http://www.sempre.org.uk/resources/2011_sept_calls.pdf

What a Life

2011-03-01T20:46:00.000Z

What A Life! from Clive Parkinson on Vimeo.
On 15 February 1949, the Conservative MP for Twickenham, Edward Keeling asked the President of the Board of Trade in the House of Commons.

"Has the Lord President seen this film? Does he know that it shows two men so depressed by the conditions of life the in England today that they try to drown themselves, but make a mess of it? Does he really think that this is the sort of film on which £9,000 of taxpayers' money should be spent?"

This Richard Massingham film is a bizarre contribution from the Crown Film Unit, and addresses the challenges Britain faced in the austere post-war era. Wartime enthusiasm and self-confidence had become seriously eroded by the crisis-laden year of 1947. Domestically, the continuation of rationing, including for the first time bread (between 1946-48) and the fuel and economic crises, together with Indian independence, 1947 was largely a year that dented the immediate post war assurances.

Please enjoy this post-war austerity film and its relevance today!