It’s important to still stay connected, and support one another. The Lord Mayor’s Appeal’s Wellbeing in the Workplace tool, produced with Samaritans and PwC, provides users with skills and techniques to recognise any signs of distress or concern, and communicate with colleagues about them.

So how can you maintain your mental health – and those of your colleagues – during lockdown?

Have regular meetings

Have regular calls and updates with your team. Use this opportunity to connect with your colleagues and share where you are with your work, as well as how you are doing on a personal level, if you feel comfortable.

Make a list

Set yourself goals for the week and commit to working through them. Writing it down can be really helpful and keep you on track.

Hear a voice

It’s not only important to communicate for business, but also your mental health. Working from a quiet home can be isolating, so make sure you keep talking. Don’t be afraid to pick up the phone and hear someone’s voice!

Use video

People are social creatures. A great deal of what we communicate to each other will not be what we say but also how we say it — the tone of voice, the expression on the face. Using video to have calls means it can be easier to communicate and understand.

Have a separate space

If you can, set up a home office space, or mark a part of your living room or kitchen table to be just yours for working. This can help increase focus, as well as providing a space that you can walk away from at the end of the day. Not everyone is lucky enough to do this, we know, but it’s a smart move if you can.

Praise and thank you

When you’re in the office it’s easy to say thank you or praise someone for a job well done, but this can be forgotten when you’re working remotely. Make sure your team mates know you’re appreciative of what they do!

Help

Don’t be afraid to ask for help. There are lots of changes happening at the moment, and it can be anxiety inducing. Whether you have a specific work problem, are struggling with mood, or just want a chat, reach out to your colleagues and employer.

Keep social

We’re used to having conversation in the office, sharing lunch, and having the occasional drink. Why not have an end of the week drink and chat with the team. It can be a great way to end the week, connect with your colleagues, and keep some sense of rhythm and normality to your routine.

Switch off

With always on technology, it can be easy to be always working. But you don’t need to. It’s important to set boundaries. If you usually finish at 5.30, do the same when you’re at home. Work may generally be becoming more flexible and fluid, but it’s important to keep space in your life for relationships, hobbies, health and wellbeing.

Have breaks

Have regular breaks. Sometimes people feel guilty about being at home, and feel the need to work late or do more. It’s ok to stand up and have a stretch, or get yourself some coffee and a biscuit and relax for a while.

For more information about Wellbeing in the Workplace, head here.

Developed in direct response to the growing number of teenagers in the UK struggling with their mental health, Crowded tells the story of ordinary young people whose anxiety, depression and desire leads to harmful and destructive behaviours.

Giving voice to emotions that are often unspoken due to social stigma, Crowded is a powerful, funny and uncompromising story, presented in a striking, immersive spoken word style with the audience part of the action. It is written and performed by three inspiring poet performers: Desree, Laura Rae and Slam the Poet, with additional text by Rosemary Harris.

I caught up with Slam the Poet to find out more.

Why did you decide to write Crowded?

We wanted to tell a story of mental wellbeing that could give multiple, diverse perspectives simultaneously. So often stories are so single-minded! And can easily focus on tragic, clinical scenarios. We wanted a story that could more flexibly adapt itself to the very varying realities of people’s minds.

What does the medium of spoken word offer?

For me, a unique opportunity to explore the sonic qualities of words, their percussions and harmonies. Other artists have notes on a keyboard, and the performing poet has their words. I love manipulating language to make it expressive in more ways than dictionary definitions can contain

It’s an immersive show, with the audience as part of the action – what impact does this have?

Well, we haven’t started touring yet, so we’ll have to wait and see! But for me, that is part of the point. With an immersive show, the audience are there with you in the action, not 10m away in a dark seating area. The unique & changing nature of each performance will challenge us to give it freshly each time, and hopefully that will allow audience members to feel deeply involved in the stories.

The writing of Crowded was a collaborative effort – what was this process like?

Mostly, collaboration happened in plotting our narrative. We were given a lot of freedom over our characters and their individual paths, which we wrote quite independently of each other. Then there was lots of work with Rosemary Harris, our dramaturg and mentor, to help weave it together as a cohesive piece of theatre.

What do you hope audiences take away from the show?

I hope it does something to normalise the storms that can spark in our heads on a daily basis. Minds are unpredictable, childish and wild things! But we feel so much pressure to control them. Hopefully this will help people reflect on how they might do better by letting themselves feel what they feel, and not adding the extra stress of judging it as right or wrong.

]]> https://andsoshethinks.co.uk/crowded-spoken-word-and-mental-health-drama/feed/ 0 https://andsoshethinks.co.uk/creative-wellbeing-ashford/ https://andsoshethinks.co.uk/creative-wellbeing-ashford/#respond Mon, 26 Mar 2018 09:06:39 +0000 https://andsoshethinks.wordpress.com/?p=9454

The website was founded by Oliver Chittenden, who has had issues with his own mental health. Recognising that it can be hard to seek out help, and that people still face stigma when they do so, he wanted to create a digital platform that ‘gathered together content in an inspiring and accessible way for people to learn about the many practical things we can do to feel better about ourselves and be better version of ourselves. In fact the premise was that this was for everyone, not just for those that struggle.’

There’s a lot of variety in terms of content – talks, videos, podcasts, and things to read – which was important to Oliver. He recognises that the ‘one size fits all’ approach simply does not work. ‘We have to go on a journey, try things out, learn and be inspired to add resources for our wellbeing especially today with so many pressures’, he says. ‘We need to adapt with the times.’ The toolbox function at Head Talks allows you to create your own playlists tailored to your ‘Head Talk’ journey, and these can also be shared. You can also look at alternative therapies and ideas, allowing you to support your mental health in ways that work for you.

It’s an accessible space for people to come to share experiences and speak honestly. Oliver was keen to avoid an overly academic or medical tone, which can be overwhelming for people. One of the main benefits is feeling part of a community. ‘People feel like they are in a room with a therapist or someone talking honestly about a lived experience of mental health. Loneliness in our society is rife – with Head Talks you can feel less lonely especially if you are in crisis or struggling.’

Of course, sometimes more professional medical help is needed. Oliver doesn’t pretend to have all the the answers. ‘Head Talks is informative and hopefully will act as a springboard towards someone taking action based on having heard a podcast or watched a ‘Head Talk’. If in crisis, one should always go to their GP and share their problems, which, in 10 minutes is challenging, but it is a start.’ But with the challenges of mental health funding an overstretched NHS, there certainly is a place for sites such as HeadTalks. ‘These types of initiatives that are free of bureaucracy are vital,’ says Oliver. ‘It is a place to feel part of a wider community and feel less lonely when times are tough.’

Treatments are most effective when they are delivered to the right people, at the right time, in the right way. Currently we don’t know what mental health treatments will work for whom, and this wastes valuable time, money – and most devastatingly, lives.

Big data could be the key to changing this, creating personalised care for people facing a mental illness.

Read more on MQ.

At only 21 and having experienced as many of the trials of life as it seems possible to have, Beth is in prison, due to committing a crime that the world and she believes can never be forgiven. She is, in her own words, 100% TM bad. And through self punishment and ingrained thoughts will never let that go.

But her counsellor, Erika, has hope. No one is all bad she believes. Through writing about the good things that she has, Beth is coaxed to realising that she is not evil, nothing is black and white, and the past is not the future. Snapshots of Beth’s life come through diary entries, letters, care reports, social worker summaries and first person narratives. We know that there has been a mum, and a baby. We learn about relationships, failed ones. There’s a few friendships that span both circumstantial and real.

But it’s fragmented, just like her past, and it’s this method of writing that turns a sad tale into a deep and emotional one. Detail of her breakdown are in fractured prose. Intense introspection in angry stream of consciousness. The memory drives the plot and the reader is with Beth as she confronts her actions and feels her emotions. We’re with her as she builds a life. Describing a childhood friendship, Beth writes ‘Being human doesn’t just mean connecting to other humans; it means connecting the human you are now with the ones you used to be.’

Female relationships play a key role in the story, and the way that Beth speaks of her unborn daughter as her team mate, ‘us’ is tender and heartening. This baby is the first person she has believed will never let her go. An unexpected pregnancy isn’t something that Beth can walk away from – unlike the father – and neither is it something that she wants to. Yet an unmarried mother with no money isn’t always welcomed.  ‘I feel that as a society we are far harsher on ‘bad’ women than ‘bad’ men; I suppose that was another motivation in writing a character like Beth.’

Beth’s history of the care system, therapy and prison all influence her personality. Clearly she is not 100% bad, but like everyone, a product of her experiences. Claire loved the experience of writing a messy character. ‘It was her difficulty and complexity which kept me writing. Most characters I write are outsiders or oddballs in some way.’  Whether you believe that they are oddballs, byproducts of a structurally damaging society, or something more sinister, it’s true that prisoners don’t usually get a voice. If writing fiction has any duties, this might be one. As Claire says  ‘For me, fiction is about taking the reader somewhere they’ve not been before. This might be a psychological place, it might be a culture or society they’ve not thought about. Writing about someone in prison allowed me to delve into all kinds of new places.’

On Clare’s website she lists books she’s loved and books that make her. Authors include Emma Unsworth, Sylvia Plath,  Kate Tempest and Zadie Smith.  With all of these writers, ‘it’s the voice which really grabs me – a voice which is unafraid to delve into all areas of life and which has a certain zest, or swagger. ‘ Beth is vulnerable and broken, but her strong voice keeps the momentum of the novel alive, even when her hope wains.

As well as her experience of working in secondary schools and its insight into the impact of family background, Clare spent a great deal of time researching prisons, the care system and trauma, and as well as speaking with researchers visited a women’s prison, ‘which was enormously eye-opening and helpful.’ It’s not an easy book to research and write, but Clare is lucky that her home city of Leeds scene is hugely supportive of writers and artists. ‘I can’t even imagine who I would be if I didn’t read or write; both activities have hugely improved my knack for listening and noticing and asking questions – all of which make for an enriched life.’ And a deep story. A story of hope.

‘You might think I’m retarded for hoping such a thing in the light, or rather the dark, of everything that’s happened.’ she writes. There’s always light and dark, always a past and a future, always action and inertia. There’s always people. There’s always life. It’s messy and chaotic and broken and confusing yet beautiful. Filled with bad things – but a lot of good.

Published in hardback by Viking on 1st June 2017, priced £12.99.

So sometimes we all need a little reminder to just keep going. And visual tools are a real benefit. Francesca from Motivational Tattoos had her idea back in 2011, laying suicidal in a hospital bed in Charing Cross in London. She had optic neuritis and was losing her sight, but determined to keep going she would write notes to herself. The experience has left her with nerve damage and pain, and whilst it was never a ‘good’ experience, one positive outcome has been the birth of Motivational Tattoos. ‘I started making tattoos for myself, and shared them on my blog, and a few people left comments asking if they could buy some. I started selling them online, and it’s just snowballed from there.’

With a background in both psychology and design Francesca was well informed about her ideas, and she uses psychological studies to inspire the creations. One study found that temporary tattooing may help adolescents alter self-harm behaviours and counter negative body image.

But despite being rooted in research, she’s clear that the products ‘are not medical devices, they are a mindfulness tools. They are not a replacement for seeking medical advice from a trained healthcare professional. They are just little pick me ups to help when you’re having a bad day!’

Response has been amazing from the mainstream media, but it’s the short letters of thanks that really matter. ‘Almost every day I wake up to messages in my inbox about how my tattoos have helped them. It’s really touching, and it keeps me going!’

We just have to keep going.

But why, in a paperless postmodern world would not only someone decide to create something as archaic as a zine, but would so many people get involved?

I decided to find out, and Séan was gracious enough to indulge my curiosity and let me know…

Why did you decide to create the zine?

Simply? A real love of Woolf, that has continued from my teenage years.

There is so much admiration for Virginia in the air, she’s like an electric current that crackles through academic dialogue and cuts into the bedrooms of moody teenagers with equal fervour. She’s an impasse, a connection, an inspiration. I wanted to bridge that gap, to make scholarship more accessible for everyone and to platform those who don’t have access to journals or conferences, their words are just as important. I wanted a big, exciting, fresh discussion of Woolf, that helps us think about her in different shades, as well as reminds us of the original colours which stamped her so deeply in our memories.

What has the response been like? Is it varied and a large community?

The response has been heart-warming. In just over a month the zine is fast approaching 1,000 followers on Twitter, and has a healthy readership. The community is rich in texture, lots of Modernists; some of my own personal academic icons have spoken about it, which has left me a little struck for words. Apart from that, it has brought the Woolfians out of the woodwork from all over the globe. Younger critics, older story tellers. The discussion is really open, and I am particularly proud of some of the non-traditional responses: the art, the reviews, the poetry.

What is your personal fascination with Woolf?

Woolf writes beautifully, first and foremost. Her work makes the everyday a spiritual experience, and I find that taps into how I think somehow – the way she sees the world as fragmented, broken, up for revision and interpretation. I also find Woolf’s politics interesting, and drew a lot of strength from her words as a teenager. Being queer and young is strange, because adults don’t often talk about gay people to children. Reading about intimacy between her characters helped me touch a history that was hidden from me, made me feel like part of something bigger. If Chloe likes Olivia, that is one thing. If you are given the opportunity find out, it’s quite another.

When did it begin and why?

Around 15. I was a very awkward teenager, as you might be able to tell. My English teacher, Mr Simpson, encouraged my love of reading and brought my attention to Woolf (for which I am very grateful). From there I found Ezra Pound, Mina Loy and H.D. – I was hooked, and now I’m working on a PhD in Modernist studies.  

As you note in your introductory letter in the first issue, it’s been over a century since the first novel, The Voyage Out was published. Why do you think Virginia Woolf continues to resonate?

Perhaps people will discourage me from saying this, but I don’t think there has been an English language writer as important to our literary cultural heritage as Shakespeare apart from Woolf. She is an institution. Multiple, difficult, readable, slippery, gifted. She tore at the fabric of writing and put it together in this ridiculously beautiful tapestry. We work and rework her constantly. This is especially interesting, considering her relatively early death. She wrote scored and scores, it’s almost unfathomable. Apart from this weight, her command of words is incredible, she writes in a way people can engage with, it’s aesthetic and meaty, a stellar rendering of some of our hardest feelings, she sets the complex in amber.

Does she speak to wider society, or is her role more for creative people, or those feeling marginalised in someway, such as due to mental health or gender? 

Woolf is there to be read, if you like her. There is no point in making someone an untouchable idol, she has a lot of issues: tensions of classism, antisemitism, and so forth. But there is something compelling about her work, and we must take the golden nuggets of truth where they fall, to lean on a reference. I grew up working class and relished her books, so I don’t think she is posturing in an inaccessible way, only open to academics or creatives.

Gender-wise, we must remain pithy. There are some amazing truths in Woolf that still ring clear, but society has moved and many of her lessons need to be expanded to include women she herself could marginalise: working class women, black women, Jewish women. If we see her as part of a longer, developing discussion however, she remains vital and useful. Read her with contemporaries such as Sojourner Truth and Nella Larsen, as well as with more modern writers like Judith Butler and bell hooks. Feminism challenges itself to be better all the time, Woolf did that in the early 20th century as she is challenged now.

I usually avoid a discussion of Woolf’s mental health problems too much. I don’t like to romanticise the death of people who are mentally unwell, especially considering the allegations of sexual abuse. I do think people can gain strength from her writing though. Reading about Septimus Smith helped me think about my own mental health at a young age, and he is a character I draw on whenever I feel at a loss even now. And, it was inspiring that a woman who struggled and faltered could still produce this amazing work, she pushed through and persevered.

What’s your favourite novel?

Of all time, D.H. Lawrence’s The Rainbow. If you haven’t read it, do. People think it’s mawkish, but I think it’s brilliant. Of Woolf’s, To The Lighthouse. I have the parenthesis from the line about Mrs Ramsay’s passing tattooed on my hip, it’s haunting in some ways, but it really reminds me to focus on what is important, especially little things, which I tend to forget about. Everything passes, so we have to enjoy it while we can.

Read the zine here, and look out for the second issue, Woolf and Others, in February. And ponder your submissions for Issue 3, Woolf and Politics.

Bristol’s Creative Youth Network and their seasonal performance of Turkey is a production formed through collaborative workshops with young people participating in their schemes and arts initiatives, all based on true stories . Written by Alice Nicholas, directed by Nick Young and produced by Emily Bull, although very much created by the cast and their peers, this immersive and real life performance at The Station is both tender and gripping – just like the rest of the festive season.

‘T’was the night before Christmas’ begins our narrator Theo (Jake Bartlett), in his dazzling glitzy jacket – and as we hear from the characters it can be everything from borderline hell or most wonderful time of the year.’  Homelessness, poverty, loneliness, broken relationships and illness can all take their toll – and the feeling of being alone and failing is only exacerbated by what looks like the perfect Christmas that everyone else all around is having.  . Often through no fault of their own individuals find themselves unable to produce that perfect day, ‘just like everyone else.’ That’s what Abigail (Cirwen Farrant) wants for her and her unborn baby Biscuit, and she speaks tenderly to her child about the eternal hope of the new year and what it will bring. ‘I should be happy and full of Christmas cheer’ our characters feel – that should weighing them down.

Like most ‘perfect’ things in life, the depiction tends to be a somewhat filtered version of events. Whether it’s the Black Friday consumerist fight, one-upmanship pursuit, the hypocrisy of ‘pretending to believe in Jesus once a year then go back to being c*nts’, the demands of bratty children, finding out Father Christmas isn’t real, or  just the fact that domestic bliss skates on thin smiles that crack by something as simple as not buying ribbon. In the pursuit of the ideal Christmas the endless ‘rush, anxiety, panic and failure’ ring more loudly than any peace and goodwill.

Or so it seems. Because for everyone who walks straight past the homeless, there’s those like Hazel’s (Emily Gilbert) family who invite Alfie (Matt Fleming) and his ‘invisibility cloak’ in for dinner. Or Abigail and her sister Jas hand crafting presents. Or the mother supported through her breakdown.

And people like Creative Youth Network and the participants of Turkey. As well providing a brilliant evening’s entertainment and making the whole audience think, they invited us all to share a meal with them, all donated by FareShare and would have gone to landfill otherwise. Sharing, laughing, and feeling part of a community – that’s what Christmas is about, and that’s what Creative Youth dished up with their Turkey.

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This book, edited by Theo Stickley, associate professor of mental health at the university of Nottingham and expert on mental health, arts and health, counselling or nurse education, brings together three rather nebulous and difficult to define concepts – qualitative, art, and mental health – with the aim of proving, at least until the ‘common sense’ argument prevails, that the arts are good for people and should be valued and embedded in practice.

As well as definitions, arts for mental health faces a systemic difficulty. When it comes to healthcare, data is key. Funders and policy makers want evidence, and the form this tends to take is figures, laboratory testing, randomised control trials and money. But not only are creative and arts based interventions difficult to measure in this way, the individual patients and services users do not see the impact in terms of statistics but the effect on their own quality of life.

This book presents eleven key examples of arts-based projects that have sought to promote mental health. They include visual arts, craft making, writing, film-making and performance, and are given the term ‘participatory arts’.

Theo Stickley offers up diary extracts from his early days in the field, when as a mental health nurse in a ‘bleak…limited’ environment where people were ‘stripped of…independence and dignity’ when he set up a creative arts programme that went on to become Nottingham’s Art In Mind.

Asking the question ‘Is art therapy?’ Langley Brown explores the difference between art as therapy and non-clinical activity, and the role of the patient within this. The evolving programme in Liverpool is explored by Julie Hanna and Polly Moseley, with collaborative commissioning being identified as a key area for focus, and four schools are looked at by Edward Sellman and Anna Cunliffe, in a balanced report addresses dangers as well as benefits. Mick McKeown et al. and Shaun & Marian Naidoo both look at the role of film, one as an art form, and one as a research tool.

The final chapter by Helen Spandler and colleagues was undertaken as part of a national study to assess the impact of participatory arts provision for people with mental health needs, 20 and explores how arts can contribute towards a ‘recovery’ approach. Fostering hope, creating a sense of meaning and purpose, rebuilding identities and improving resilience are the hardest to standardise and measure, ‘yet may be the most profound and significant outcomes of participation in such projects’. Helen Brooks and David Pilgrim also consider the distinction between ‘transactional’ and ‘transformational’ change.

Effective art practice should not involve patients as subjects to do something to, but active creators along with artist facilitators, and so many of the chapters look at the perspective of the latter and their own experience. The research examples use various qualitative methods to capture the contexts and meanings of arts practice, with the aim of reflecting the voice of the participant through narratives discourse, ethnography or participatory action research. Researchers are by nature curious, and this curiosity should extend to exploring new methods of inquiry that are flexible and reflexive, truly reflecting the experience of the subject – but seeing that subject as a human being.

This, if anything, feels like the noble goal of Theo Stickley’s Qualitative Research in Arts and Mental Health: Context, meaning and evidence. To view art as a human experience in which the experience of humans matters. Identity, hope and resilience are all important attributes of a person’s life, whether they are deemed to have health problems or not, and arts based approaches offer a ‘unique and life transforming contribution to mental healthcare.’ this collection of research and documentation is one valuable step towards its recognition as such.