Journal of Applied Arts & Health - Volume 4, Issue 2, 2013

The aim of providing a close reading of a randomized controlled trial (RCT) of reminiscence groups for people with dementia and an evaluation of a pilot arts programme for people with dementia is to compare evidence from the paradigms of health and arts. Whilst the RCT is the gold standard of research in Health, the qualitative approach favoured by arts may be able to capture subtle shifts in participants’ affect. Although RCTs are beyond the budget of small arts organizations, there are lessons to be learnt in terms of study design – the use of control groups, random allocation, the blinding of researchers to the intervention participants receive, regular data collection points and the use of validated quantitative scales. There is already considerable pressure on small arts organizations to provide effective evaluation that satisfies a range of stakeholders, and adopting the suggested methodologies would require considerable support in terms of resource and expertise. While the focus of this article is on arts and health work for older people, the principal of comparing a RCT with a general evaluation has relevance for arts programmes with health outcomes for a range of participants.

This article reports on the experiences of a group of five undergraduate theatre students working alongside people who use mental health services. Our aim was to study any changes in students’ attitudes over the period when they were making theatre with people with mental health problems. At first students were keen to define ‘mental illness’ and to draw clear lines between people who had or did not have mental health problems. They were likely to notice differences and attribute these to mental illness and they were keen to understand how they could help people through theatre. The most striking consequence of students’ contact was a change from regarding people who use mental health services as ontologically different, highly vulnerable and in need of special care and treatment to engaging with them as theatre makers and learners: a relationship and a purpose far more familiar to students. We have called this ‘a return to ordinariness’.

This article documents the pilot From Where You Are project, which researched the effects of improvised, somatic dance practice with children and young people on the Neuromedical and Oncology wards of Alder Hey Children’s Hospital (AHCH), UK, in 2008–2009. It considers how the non-judgemental, inclusive and implicitly phenomenological methodology of dance improvisers, whose practice is informed by somatic and environmental approaches, is particularly appropriate and successful in a clinical setting. This is substantiated through an interpretive phenomenological approach, incorporating first-person description and case studies, and provides tangible evidence of the benefits of this practice in paediatric health care.

Despite increasing calls for a robust evidence base, there is no clear consensus surrounding appropriate methodologies for evaluation of the impact of arts on health and well-being. Commissioners and stakeholders often require evidence of measurable outcomes, but quantitative evaluation does not provide a complete picture of impact, neither can it explain the effects of arts. Further, outcomes and impact evaluation must be balanced with process evaluation to guide the development of practice. Practitioners face significant challenges in responding to these issues, including evaluation capacity, knowledge, skills and resources. This article reports on a project that supported the arts and health field by generating knowledge, resources and support for evaluation. A two-year Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) between an Arts and Health consultancy and a University explored evaluation issues and developed strategies with practitioners. A guided evaluation model, in which external evaluators worked alongside practitioners in an iterative process, was developed. While resourcing such partnerships is challenging, our project demonstrates that they can strengthen sustainable evaluation, generating evidence for local commissioning as well as contributing to longer-term research agendas.

In 2012 the University of Greenwich acquired the reminiscence theatre archive of Pam Schweitzer, founder and former Artistic Director of Age Exchange Theatre Company. This article is an account of our first performance project using the archive in collaboration with student volunteers and Schweitzer herself, to explore the possibilities for activating the archive materials through reperformance. Through a process of devising new plays from the archived transcripts of elderly people’s memories, and then performing them in local Sheltered Housing units, the project was designed to enable an assessment of what ongoing benefits the archive might bring to the teaching, research, student experience and community engagement activities of the drama programme. The project has offered indications as to how Schweitzer’s well-known reminiscence theatre methods can be adapted for working with archived materials; and the research findings suggest some of the challenges and possible new directions that might be taken, in the continued reuse of the Reminiscence Theatre Archive.

This article discusses video-based enquiry as a means to explore representations of the human body in medical education. A video piece, Preclinical Body, will be considered as a case study introducing different views on the body, as offered in medical education. Methodological questions are central in this article as it both maps the parameters of the video-based, performative, and narrative outcomes, and draws connections between associated approaches of visual anthropology, ethnotheatre and narrative enquiry. This article parallels a data analysis with a video editing process, and introduces a synthesis of the data and the researcher’s interpretation in a new video narrative.

Theatre, Education and Performance, Helen Nicholson (2011) Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 245 pp., ISBN: 9780230574236, p/bk, £17.99

Theatre for Change: Education, Social Action and Therapy, Robert J. Landy and David T. Montgomery (2012) New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 337 pp., ISBN: 978-0-230-24366-8, p/bk, $30.00

Expressive Arts in the Winds of Change, 10th International Conference of the International Expressive Arts Therapy Association, Double Tree Hotel, Berkeley, CA, 14–17 March 2013

Exploring where Poetry and Therapy Intersect: Two workshops delivered by Diana Hedges and Reamonn O’Donnchadha, PoetryReach, Maynooth, County Kildare, Ireland, 23 March 2013