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- Volume 5, Issue 1, 2014
Journal of Applied Arts & Health - Volume 5, Issue 1, 2014
Volume 5, Issue 1, 2014
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Visual narratives performing and transforming people living with autoimmune illness: A pilot case study
Authors: Kathryn Grushka, Marline L. Squance and Glenn E. M. ReevesAbstractIdentity perspectives underpin an arts health intervention research project titled ‘Artmaking, visual narrative and wellbeing’. This article considers the adaptability benefits of working with art-making narratives to support the long-term emotional and physical well-being of people living with chronic autoimmune illness. The article describes the methods and background to the pilot transdisciplinary case study of twelve participants, the intervention, data sources and qualitative strategies that were intersected with quantitative, medical, physical and functionality indicators. It identified that time and memory work, using montage methods in visual narratives, supported a renewed confidence in the participants’ life journey. Notions of pain and time temporarily retreated when strong affective responses emerged from new storied possibilities. These findings demonstrate how visual narrative methods work as a sense-making experience for the collision between past narratives and present specific medical and/or sociocultural contexts. The findings are discussed in the context of their potential contribution to the wider arts and health debate.
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Assessing well-being outcomes for arts and heritage activities: Development of a Museum Well-being Measures toolkit
Authors: Linda Thomson and Helen ChatterjeeAbstractMany museums and galleries offer services directed at improving the health and well-being of their audiences. Despite this increasing area of activity there is no standardized method for assessing the impact on participants. Recent research into heritage-in-health revealed the need for a culture-specific toolkit of measures to assess the well-being of adults participating in museum, arts and heritage activities. A pre-trial survey of UK specialist museums ascertained how a toolkit might be used and what methods of evaluation already existed. Prototypes were trialled over twelve months and a post-trial survey was conducted prior to production of the toolkit. Statistically reliable measures were constructed for positive and negative emotion. Comparison of pretest-posttest differences showed highly significant increases in positive scores and decreases in negative scores with medium to large effect sizes. All words in the measures contributed to changes in emotion. Full and short Generic Well-being Questionnaires (GWQ) were developed for people with dementia.
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‘Sound of Well-being’ revisited – Choir singing and well-being among Norwegian municipal employees
Authors: Jonas Vaag, Per Øystein Saksvik, Vibeke Milch, Töres Theorell and Ottar BjerkesetAbstractA recent cross-sectional study investigating an organizational choir-singing intervention called ‘Sound of Well-being’ (SOW) indicated health and organizational benefits, and a gender-specific pattern of participation and outcomes. In this study we investigate participation and effects in a short version of SOW. A total of 1100 employees of a Norwegian municipality were invited to participate in SOW. At baseline, 472 (42.9 per cent) employees filled in a questionnaire concerning demographics, personality, health, engagement, commitment and psychosocial work environment. A total of 312 (66.1 per cent) of these completed the same survey one to three weeks after SOW was finished. We found that female gender and extroversion were linked to participation in SOW. Women reported significant changes in engagement, self-perceived health and control, while men reported changes in job demands. Overall, participants reported an increase, while non-participants reported decrease on aforementioned variables. In terms of participation and effects of SOW, findings differed between professions, personality types and gender. In order to provide desirable alternatives to a wider group of employees, future interventions should include a variety of both receptive and creative activities.
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Creating community: An arts-based enquiry
Authors: Ro Horsford, Jean Rumbold, Helen Varney, Deborah Morris, Lynette Dungan and Theresa Van LithAbstractThis article presents a small cooperative enquiry in a public health setting where six researchers used arts-based methods to explore our experiences of community and its effects. We represented our experiences in images and stories, and include these presentational forms of knowing here alongside the analyses that connect our findings to propositions about health, community and social inclusion. In terms of practical knowing, we sought a greater understanding of what forms, what constrains and what sustains community.
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Arts on prescription for older people: Different stakeholder perspectives on the challenges of providing evidence of impact on health outcomes
More LessAbstractProviding evidence of health or well-being outcomes for arts on prescription (AoP) programmes for older people is problematic. A number of reports have shown that the Department of Health (DoH) supports the role of art in health (ACE 2007a; 2007b, Cayton 2007), but this has not translated into long-term, strategic funding. This article uses interviews with health, arts and voluntary sector professionals involved in five AoP programmes in England, UK, to provide an understanding of the challenges of providing evidence and of sustaining such work. Interviewees noted the tension between arts and health requirements, arguing that quantitative evaluation fails to capture the process of participation and the impact of programmes within the context of an individual’s life. However, using both qualitative and quantitative methods and demonstrating cost-savings was felt necessary. The substantial changes the National Health Service (NHS) is undergoing presents threats to embedding AoP in the light of financial cuts and opportunities through new commissioning structures. To attempt to gain policy support from the DoH and sustained funding from the NHS, the development of quantitative evaluation of health outcomes and demonstration of cost-savings alongside qualitative evaluation is recommended. Despite being in a relatively weak position in terms of influencing health policy, the article also recommends arts organizations invest energy in advocacy.
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The purpose and importance of personal creativity for creative arts therapists: A brief literature review
More LessAbstractCreative arts therapists who cease to create their own art are at a risk of clinification, a term defined and explored by P. B. Allen. The field of creative arts therapy will neither survive nor progress if creative arts therapists are not habitually engaged in the practice of creativity and art-making themselves. This article will briefly review existing literature on the importance of art-making by creative arts therapists for personal purposes. Although creative arts therapists may make art with clients for clinical purposes, this article will focus on the need for a consistent and personal exploration through and with art in order to fully understand the art form and its transformative properties. In addition, this article will demonstrate a need for additional research in this field.
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Collaborative local governance for arts in health: Learning from an arts programme for hospital-based stroke patients
Authors: Matt Baumann, Simon Peck, Carrie Collins, Jeannine Johnson, Colin Riches and Guy EadesAbstractThe issue of training, supervision of artists and governance of arts and health practice is a major area requiring resolution for the development of arts-in-health practice. Moss and O’Neill posit that arts and health practice should be regulated and professionalized, whilst Mike White argues that arts practice should be the collective responsibility of local agencies and individuals working together to establish arts and health programmes. There has been limited discussion and debate within and between leading arts and health organizations. This article contributes to and raises the profile of this issue, by describing the development of a substantive arts programme for stroke patients, focusing on how artists were sensitized, prepared and supported to work with stroke patients in the specific setting of an arts programme for hospital-based stroke patients. It suggests that professional artists can be supported locally to deliver valued arts programmes. The article also outlines how the materials developed for the programme could be used in a number of ways to help support the development of flexible, local, professional arts practice in health contexts in other areas.
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Experience of portraiture in a clinical setting: An artist’s story
By Mark GilbertAbstractIn this article the author reflects upon the challenges, rewards and learning he experienced as a portrait painter working on two arts-based research projects in hospitals. He describes how the relationships with the patients and caregivers who sat for their portraits generated new realizations for artist and model. Although initially resistant to the notion of art as research, his profound experiences co-creating with people portrayed, convinced him of the healing values and therapeutic benefits that artistic practices have in abundance. Portraiture, here, served as a bridge that brought the two worlds of art and medicine together.
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Reviews
Authors: Heidi Landis, Karen Peacock, Jessica Young and Kym M. RaeAbstractDramatherapy with Myth and Fairytale: The Golden Stories of Sesame, Jenny Pearson, Mary Smail and Pat Watts (2013) London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 256 pp., ISBN: 9781849050302, p/bk, £22.99/$36.95
Museums, Health, and Well-Being, Helen Chatterjee and Guy Noble (2013) England: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 146 pp., ISBN: 9781409425816, h/bk, £45.00
Soul and Spirit in Dance Movement Psychotherapy: A Transpersonal Approach, Jill Hayes (2013) London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 224 pp., ISBN: 9781849053082, p/bk, US $24.75, eISBN: 9780857006493, e-book, US $19.49
Breathing Deeply: Culture of Health and Well-being Conference, Bristol, 24–27 June 2013
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