Project CREATE - supporting arts based research

Recently I worked alongside University of Leeds ‘Project Create’ which brings Social Scientists, Young People and Artists together to explore the role of creativity in supporting health & well-being.

I ran a series of Participatory Photography workshops with a group of young people, while two other groups took part in Art and Film workshops delivered by my partners in creative mischief - the wonderfully talented Sarah Astin & Ruby Ingleheart

The photography group named their showcase ‘This is NOT a Trauma Dump’ which came out of a conversation about how sometimes people can feel pressured to share details of their life that they don’t want to, or even worse it can become a competition to see who ‘has it worse’.

I think this was also connected to my approach, leaning into Asset Based Community Development and ‘starting with what is strong, not what is wrong’ when it comes to creative explorations.

The work they created in such a short space of time absolutely blew me away! The groups presented their work to each other at a showcase event at the end - it was pretty special!

Since this was a research project, participants were able to step out of the process at regular intervals to reflect on their unfolding experience in real-time! It was a really Interesting challenge to facilitate a photovoice project in this context.

It’s particularly fascinating to me as someone who is passionate about and advocates for the role of creativity in supporting health and well-being

It feels great to be involved in this lovely mix of very hands on and practical research with young people and academic researchers.

Hugely grateful to all of the young people who took part, without your trust and involvement none of this would be possible. Massive shout out to my fellow Artists Ruby & Sarah and to all of the researchers and academic staff who created such a welcoming and engaging space to explore together!

I’ll be exploring this project further in a podcast coming soon!