Intercorporeality: Connectedness and creative collaboration in the embodied practice of dance

Dance plays a role in healing rituals across a number of cultures and is also recognised to promote social bonding. This, of course, includes contemporary Western medicine, in which dance is used in psychotherapeutic contexts in the form of dance/movement therapy (DMT). As a contribution to the burgeoning field of health humanities, this paper seeks to explore the power of dance to mitigate human suffering and reacquaint us with what it means to be human through bringing the embodied practice of dance into dialogue with the work of the French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty. The promise of the health humanities is of a broader and richer understanding of what is healthful and therapeutic through exploration of and insight into the human condition. As such, it celebrates the uses of arts and humanities within traditional healthcare settings, practices and training, but also calls for a reimaging of the boundaries of health and healing, so that our intellectual and therapeutic focus might escape the physical and, perhaps more importantly, the epistemological constraints of the clinical. In this spirit, this paper presents an alternative understanding of dance as therapeutic, which is based in philosophy rather than in the psy-disciplines or the neuroscientific insights that currently dominate the literature of DMT as a clinical practice

Birth professionals make art: Using participatory arts to think about being a birthing professional

In The Birth Project we are exploring women‘s experience of childbirth and the transition to motherhood using the arts and then presenting the research findings in films and exhibitions. Our overarching research question wishes to explore what role arts engagement might have to play in antenatal and postnatal provision, especially where post-birth trauma is being translated into bodily symptoms or depression. The Birth Project is also interested in investigating to what extent clinically-related birth practices are implicated in iatrogenic outcomes, especially post-natal distress. Furthermore, the research is also concerned to explore the birth experience from the perspective of the birth professionals involved. A suite of films has been produced and several shared at the conference

Home and mental ill-health: Twenty dimensions

In the context of psychiatric rehabilitation and care, home is often associated with health. In the context of deinstitutionalization, however, home has increasingly become the primary site of psychiatric suffering. Drawing on a two-year ethnographic research project with a drama group for young adult mental healthcare service users living in supported housing facilities, this paper presents twenty dimensions of home through which mental ill-health can be approached as a bodily experienced, and discursively and medically structured form of being in the world. These dimensions are here offered as a framework for further exploration of the social, spatial, temporal, structural and embodied aspects of psychiatric suffering

Medicine and the muse: Opportunities for connection through education, research and shared experience

Introduction: The Stanford Medicine and the Muse: Medical Humanities and the Arts Program is based at a research intensive medical school, which trains physician-scientists and lauds bench and translational scientific endeavours. However, traits which lead to scientific excellence, such as curiosity and interest in interdisciplinary work, are also traits necessary for innovation in health humanities. The Program began over 15 years ago as a bud of a research grant program for Stanford medical students. Initial emphasis on arts and humanities scholarly work as a track in medical education led to a multi-pronged Program with education, research, community-building and outreach missions. Methodology: Three of the multiple components of the Program will be examined. 1. The Biomedical Ethics and Medical Humanities Scholarly Concentration which has supported over 120 medical student projects. A qualitative study of alumni of the Scholarly Concentration is currently being analysed 2. Cross-disciplinary elective courses such as The Art of Observation, held in the University‘s art museums with peer-peer interactions between medical and art history graduate students. 3. Community-building through creative writing and literature discussion groups for medical students, health professionals, and the support of Pegasus Physician Writers. Discussion: By initiating the Stanford Medicine and the Muse Program as part of the research mission at the medical school, the Program gained traction in the local culture. Networking across the University and beyond enables meaningful exchange and new opportunities. Program expansion, including writing and literature groups, respond to needs for community building and wellness experiences

Experiencing wellbeing at La Ruche d'Art: Methods and materials of an art hive

Involvement in the creative arts has a sustained and positive impact on mental and social wellbeing. Adding a third space for arts-based social inclusion, community engagement, and service learning for university students, provides a powerful vehicle for civic exchange across diverse demographics. Over time, a community art studio, aka Art Hive, provides a platform for participatory practice research leading to social innovation. This workshop recreated in part, La Ruche d'Art (The Art Hive), a university storefront classroom and a public home place for residents in a low wealth neighbourhood in Montreal. A public home place is a protected safe space, both psychologically and physically, which invites community members to share their skills and develop their unique voices. The workshop introduced theories, methods, and materials used in the Art Hive. Attendees assembled small visual journals based on creative reuse principles while sharing stories related to the relevance and scope of these special third spaces. Concordia University‘s Art Hive launched in 2011 hosts a network of 100 Art Hives across North America and Europe. This workshop encouraged participants to consider developing an Art Hive in their workplace or community

Brain fever in Gaskell's Cousin Phillis: Reading and hiding love in the body of Victorian heroines

When we consider Victorian literature, it is striking to note the high number of novels that participated in the growing debate of the time around health, in particular that of women. This debate was encouraged by the attention nineteenth century medicine paid to the female body. Thus, there are countless examples of novels in which the heroine falls mysteriously ill at a certain point in the plot, disconcerting family and friends and requiring the immediate assistance of the doctor and the nurse. Contemporary medical theories warned about the somatic consequences of both emotional excess and repression, particularly in the case of women, considered by nature more emotional than men. Therefore, medical anxieties focused on women, especially bourgeois women, scrutinizing their bodies for external signs of emotion. The female body, subject to the medical gaze, turns into a text that offers her readers privileged access to her emotional life. Its vigilance and the control of her emotions was necessary to grant her health and that of the Empire. Despite the effort of doctors to acquire it, this ability to read bodily signs of emotion was directly attributed to women. However, it is interesting to analyse how novels like Cousin Phillis (1865) provided instruction in the emotional language of the body. Gaskell‘s novel supports medical theories about the threat of emotions to the fragile balance of female health while, simultaneously, questioning the supposedly natural association of women with affective hermeneutics

The use of group vocal improvisation as a music therapy technique in a mental health setting

Although group work and the use of voice and of improvisation techniques are three common features in music therapy practices, a systematic review of the literature has shown that the combination of these elements has been overlooked in the research. This review also showed an association between using pre-composed material when working with the voice and, on the other hand, using instruments when improvising. This polarisation of instruments versus voice when addressing production and reproduction techniques in music therapy is not made explicit in the literature and therefore the clinical reasoning behind it might respond to decisions other than clinically orientated. Instead, these implicit assumptions appear to have become established practices in the music therapy discipline. The present research project addresses the use of group vocal improvisation as a specific music therapy technique and attempts to look at the differences in therapeutic processes between this specific technique and a standard use of group music therapy, mainly making use of instruments. The workshop will demonstrate some of the techniques and will attempt to demonstrate their accessibility whilst uncovering the clinical reasoning behind the use of group vocal improvisation

Take a photo a day and call me in the morning: Exploring photography projects and well-being

The practice of taking a photo every day and sharing it online has increased in popularity across social media and image-sharing websites. This paper explores the potential well-being benefits of participating in this practice, examining the different social and creative ways in which participants use it. We interviewed sixteen people who currently participate in photo-a-day projects, and identified with the concept that participation in these projects had positive well-being benefits. Data were analysed using a grounded and iterative approach. Analysis focused on how participants derived well-being benefits in photo-a-day projects. Photo-a-day projects enabled participants to look differently at the world. There was something satisfying to participants about noticing the world around them more, perhaps giving a sense of being more alive because they were more aware. The negative impacts on well-being mainly centred around the rules and constraints of the projects, including feeling obliged to respond to comments. Nevertheless, photo-a-day projects gave a sense of agency and choice, focused around a pleasant goal. Sharing photos could enhance social connections and lead to new relationships. The structure of taking one photo every day encouraged reminiscence, looking back on positive experiences and negative experiences overcome

Feeling alive! : Participatory visual arts programme and vitality in a nursing home – A Singapore case study

The priorities many nursing homes give to physical care often supersede consideration for leisure arrangement and resources for residents. Such an approach often resulted in low level of activity. Inactive lifestyle in nursing homes can diminish the quality of life of residents and elicit negative emotions such as boredom, reinforced dependency, lowered self-esteem, and diminished morale. In the light of population ageing and an increased in demand for nursing homes in Singapore, this research addressed the current lack of research on lifestyle arrangement to promote the personal well-being of nursing home residents. In doing so, it investigates the effect of a participatory visual arts programme to foster the well-being of nursing home residents. Through a novel approach that combined arts-health practice with social scientific qualitative case study, the link between participatory arts and vitality was explored. Participatory arts was found to vitalise the sensory, physical, cognitive, emotional, social dimension of residents and promote self-actualisation

ProVACAT: Practising or viewing art cognitive ability trial: A collaboration between the Ben Uri Gallery and Museum and Hammerson House Care Home (2015/16)

Art Engagement to Slow Cognitive Impairment and Improve Wellbeing. As the UK National Health Service strives to support an ageing population with increased life expectancy we see a rise in social prescribing. Our ambition is to conduct a randomised, long-term intervention assessing the potential for arts engagement to slow expected cognitive decline and improve wellbeing. We identified a residential care home with the appropriate facilities and support for a feasibility study. Our intervention sees Group A receive practical art sessions exploring new materials and techniques. Group B receive seminars responding to replica artworks with open discussion. Participant wellbeing was measured immediately following each session using the UCL Museum Wellbeing Measures Toolkit. Over twelve weeks, two groups of four participants, each with an average age of 93 attended one hour creative sessions and seminars respectively. The results demonstrate a positive variability of outcomes with different wellbeing responses between the two groups at this early stage. They mark the potential for more ambitious projects, addressing a larger group of participants with greater measurement of cognitive function under a randomised controlled trial. The project seeks to achieve a generalisablity applicable to varying demographics