Medley

Changing Image

When you photograph, do you ever think how photography can be a tool for change? If photography boosts your wellbeing, do you ever think how it might do so all the more if you used it to lobby, to push for reform? I recently heard about photographer Tish Murtha (1956-2013), who used her cameras to open up lives out of view, on Tyneside, and whose daughter has now made a film about her life and work.

As an arts for wellbeing practitioner, seeing how art and creativity can really boost mood and lift spirits, I usually focus on personal wellbeing itself. Running art for wellbeing challenges and leading an NHS group, I see people share how art relaxes and calms them, gives them something positive to focus on in dark times, a way to have some time to themselves. The experience itself is the focus. But I’m always thinking about different ways creativity can help, different possible impacts and ideas to try. So I respond to the idea that using art – and specifically here photography – to press for change, could also help your own wellbeing. Channelling sadness or frustration can be positive,

After all, depression and low mood have many causes, personal and wider, but issues and news and injustices play their part. I know people who find the news so depressing that they go out of their way not to watch or listen to it anymore, or who need a news fast from time to time. One way the news depresses people is by making them feel powerless. You’re confronted with real wrongs or tragedies or injustice and then left with little or no way to make a difference in response. And obviously with many issues, it’s unlikely you or I will be able to do anything. But people have long found new and creative ways to be heard and seen, to respond, to raise awareness. These imaginative ideas can sit alongside the mainstream, where politics happens. Take the movement to end Britain’s slave trade in 1807. There were meetings and petitions, there was a sugar boycott, there was – finally – an Act of Parliament. But along the way there was a famous image: that of an enslaved man asking “Am I not a man and a brother?” which came to personify the movement. Image, visual memory, can be powerful.

That’s why war art and war photography have had real impact over the years in showing conflict on the ground. And that’s why Tish Murtha used photography to record and share the everyday realities of disadvantaged and marginalized communities in Newcastle and London.

What causes or issues do you think most about? What images could symbolize how you feel about them? Causes come and go, some endure, others fade. The climate emergency has gained ground lately, and the sense of urgency many of us feel could fuel creativity. The struggles of the UK’s NHS could be another inspiration, very close to home. Then there are perennial and vital issues like trade justice and raising living standards across the globe.

Even just thinking what everyday image you could photograph, or draw or paint, to sum up an issue could focus and concentrate your mind. Maybe a clothing label, a traffic jam, or a crowded hospital department. Some photographers travel overseas to record climate change. But we’re all surrounded by images here and now that can show something of what’s happening. And today, sharing and tagging online, maybe on Instagram, X or Facebook can have an impact on a wider audience.

It would be great if you have any thoughts or experiences to share in Medley’s Facebook group https://www.facebook.com/groups/359291215486002 Thank you.

Hello Winter

Winter’s almost here, and researchers at the University of Glasgow have suggested that writing a letter to winter might help us feel less depressed by this time of year. When the idea hit the news recently, some laughed, but others gave it a try.

I wonder what you would say if you were to write a letter to winter? Perhaps you’d ask winter to stay away and leave us alone, let us go on enjoying mild days and light evenings all year long? Or maybe you’d ask for a cold, clear winter with snowfall for Christmas?

The idea is that writing a letter helps us think more about winter and may alter our perspective. So I wonder what kind of letter would do that. Would you write a thank-you letter, an upbeat letter, an angry letter or a sad letter? Would you ask winter questions, as if hoping for a reply? Would it be a long letter, as you think through memories of winter, hopes and fears, or would it be a note? Would you call winter names?

Like many of us, I think there are positives and negatives about winter, and I’d explore these in my letter. I’d tell winter that I like the vivid sunsets at this time of year, when the sky lights up with every shade of red and amber, sometimes at the end of a dark, cloudy day. I’d add that I love seeing bare trees silhouetted against the sky, ivy scrambling up trees – welcome colour – and conifer trees and holly and ivy berries. On winter walks, with less profusion of growth to look at, I like looking more closely at what remains and trying to be mindful. I’d tell winter I like lamp light as the evenings draw in – and that I love seeing those evenings gradually, slowly draw out again as light steals in once December 21 is behind us. And then there’s more time to be spent indoors, painting or drawing or crafting.

So far, so good. But if the letter’s supposed to explore how I feel about winter on every level, I need to be open. I’d have to tell winter how I do struggle with the cold, and sometimes with the dark, and that I feel winter outstays its welcome every single year. A few weeks would do fine! I’d explain to winter how rushing indoors early as the light fades feels frustrating, and how I dislike days of wind and rain all year but all the more when it’s cold too. I’d admit to winter how it limits life so less seems possible and how it feels like a time of waiting for life to start to open up once more in spring.

Maybe it’s worth a try? The idea of writing a letter feels like it personifies winter, gives it a character, which might feel odd – so you could write a journal entry instead. But in a way I think letter writing seems more expressive, more like getting your feelings out into the open to leave them there – even though winter won’t read your letter. Perhaps it helps set aside those feelings, so you can muddle through this time of year.

It would be great if you have any thoughts or experiences to share in Medley’s Facebook group https://www.facebook.com/groups/359291215486002? Thank you.

Building Blocks

Do you ever think about how the built environment impacts on your wellbeing, wherever you are? It’s so easy to take for granted, seeing familiar buildings and streets, day in, day out, we forget that how they look isn’t inevitable. Whether it’s your house or flat, your school or place of work, your care home, your community centre, or your high street, your built environment matters.

Living in towns or cities, built environment is obviously ever present. But in rural areas too, it matters. Harmony with the natural environment and with the rest of the built environment is integral, whatever the location. In an urban setting it might be all the more important to integrate design with green space, to ensure there feels space to breathe. The smallest outdoor spaces can be planted up, nature in microcosm.

This autumn the RIBA Stirling Prize 2023 for Best New Building was won by a care and assisted living development in London. The judges cited how the building demonstrated that design can encourage wellbeing and a sense of belonging, and lift spirits. For example, covered walkways were incorporated into the design to link communal areas.

What would you like your built environment to be like? There’s design: every individual building’s design and what it is built with. Then there’s wider layout and overlap with town planning. A particular building might be attractively designed and constructed using sustainable materials, but if the setting is overcrowded then the impact will be less. Issues like traffic flow and air, noise and light pollution are also vital.

Important design features for individual buildings could be creating large south-facing windows to let in sunlight. Then the view through those windows matters too, and could be improved with windowboxes or planters of flowers. Few of us can directly design or build, but interior design can also make a real difference, simple additions like colourful walls or stenciled decoration.

I feel strongly that natural light would improve the interiors of many modern public buildings which can be oppressive and enclosed – these might be hospitals or offices or warehouses.

Built environment also impacts on how we interact with our community, as in the prize-winning complex in London. Spaces for recreation or gathering can help.

Visual impact may be the most obvious overall – an ugly or beautiful building, green spaces, no view. But there are other sensory impacts – buildings and their materials may be noisy or not encourage good air flow or feel too hot or cold.

If the built environment is well designed and constructed, it can make wherever you live or work or spend time a positive place to be – practical, light, colourful, cheerful, open and airy. If it isn’t so well designed, it can be depressing, soulless, inaccessible, overcrowded, dark, stifling. If you’re in that space everyday, or just sometimes, it can sap energy or drag you down. How have you found design and the built environment impact your wellbeing? It would be great if you have any thoughts or experiences to share in Medley’s Facebook group https://www.facebook.com/groups/359291215486002 Thank you.

Warm On The Inside

Do you remember ”warm hubs”? It feels like no time at all since last winter’s issues with fuel poverty and heating, getting through the colder months with the cost of living spiraling. Now we’ve changed the clocks once more, summer has gone and we are into late autumn, and the cost of living is still high. As an arts for wellbeing practitioner, I’m thinking at the moment where arts for wellbeing fit with people’s struggles just to get by.

These very struggles obviously impact on wellbeing. It’s not easy to feel upbeat and positive if you’re cold and anxious about bills and the winter’s stretching ahead. And art (or music or dance or any of the arts) have all been proven to help wellbeing. But might they feel trivial and a luxury? To someone who isn’t sure they can afford to turn the heating on, might the suggestion that art lifts mood seem insulting? Or just insensitive? “First world problems” and “nicer problems to have” are expressions that spring to mind. So too is Marie Antoinette’s famous response when told people had no bread to eat: “Then eat cake instead.”

Recently I heard about Bassetlaw Action Centre in Nottinghamshire supplying warm packs to struggling households in this former mining area. The packs contain oil radiators and an electric blanket, to heat rooms at far lower cost. Initiatives like warm packs and warm hubs have started gearing up again for another winter. Organisations like the CAB have announced soaring levels of people requesting financial support or help with mental health – in many places, demand has doubled. The need for mental health care here brought me back to thinking where arts for wellbeing fit in. They won’t fix the cost of living. They won’t literally warm up winter. But all I’ve experienced and seen and heard over three years sharing art for wellbeing with people in different situations has lightlighted one thing. That life with art (or craft or drama or music) is far richer and more colourful and stimulating and satisfying than life without. It isn’t for everyone, but for most there’ll be at least one art form that can enhance life.

People asking for mental health support may have mental health issues because of the cost of living. Practical support with heating and eating will ease these. But the nagging fear will likely remain, and their issues may be deeper rooted. This is where arts for wellbeing can come in, opening up space away from everyday issues. And art can be an economical hobby – drawing with a pencil, or upcycling old fabric scraps to use for craft. You could even try making a draught excluder or knitting or sewing a throw or scarf to fight the cold too.

Wellbeing depends on so many different issues, but confidence, empowerment, inclusion are integral. Feeling excluded, shut out, powerless, unable to do what you want or need to do, all erode mood and wellbeing, whether little by little or all at once. Reducing life to a struggle to feel warm and full shrinks perspectives. Arts throw the doors open wide again.

Into The Woods

What first comes into your mind when you hear or see the word “tree”? Is it tree bark, gnarled or shiny or covered with ivy? Is it autumn leaves tinting now all different colours? Is it a walk in a wood or a city tree on a crowded street, or a childhood memory of doing a bark rubbing. Free association (seeing what is the first thought a word suggests) is an idea counsellors use to help explore a person’s thoughts and feelings and experiences, and it can be fun for anyone to try.

I think what stands out most for me about trees is their solidity and endurance, how they withstand time and weather and bud again in spring. A cherry tree in my garden has had scarcely any leaves this year, but still it stands.

Of all nature, it’s probably trees and woods that have become most recognized as beneficial to mood, mental health and wellbeing. That’s partly down to research such as Roger Ulrich’s famous discovery of the benefits of trees to patients recovering from surgery, but it’s also down to our own instinctive response to trees. It’s why immersive experiences of nature have become known as “forest bathing” no matter where they take place – as if forests stand for rest and renewal more than any other environment. Is it because they shelter us overhead so we feel enclosed? Is it because we know we depend on trees as our planet’s lungs? Or because they are home to so many other creatures?

The other day I came across wood ants – not for real, but in David Attenborough’s Life in the Undergrowth of 2005. As their name suggests, they live in conifer forests, where they build nests of mounds of pine needles. Each ant is only 8 mm long, but the nests may be 2 metres, as they live in communities of thousands. They depend on the conifer trees for nesting and also for resin and for insect prey. Just one glimpse of the teeming and exuberant life supported by every tree and wood.

Trees have become known particularly as calming, slowing heart rate and lowering blood pressure. But they’re also exciting – gusting in strong winds – and colourful – at different times of the year – and full of life. Trees and woods can be light and bright, or dark places of mystery. No wonder many stories have wooded or forest settings – think the enchanted glades of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, or the forests of countless fairy tales, or the stories of Julia Donaldson for children. But a single city tree can also lift the spirits, a refuge amidst traffic fumes and concrete.

All this is why I’m running an art for wellbeing challenge on a trees theme for the month of November, Into The Woods. Every other day I’ll send out a different art idea about trees or woods, to try from home in your own time (with an optional Facebook group to share artwork). Just go to

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/710328590937

to sign up. Art and creativity can be so beneficial for wellbeing themselves, so hopefully experiencing trees by getting creative could really boost mood, as winter nears.

Ballet Boost

Have you ever thought that ballet might boost your wellbeing? Perhaps you dance, or used to dance. Perhaps you enjoy listening to ballet music, or watching ballet, either live in a theatre or streamed or on TV. For World Ballet Day, I’m exploring how ballet might improve wellness and mood. Why might it do that? In three main ways: ballet opens up space away, fires the imagination, and combines music and movement.

Ballet as space away? Most ballets usually have an element of entering other worlds, of fantasy and imagination and dreaming. Costumes, lighting and music combine with the dance to conjure up a new and magical setting and scene. Think Swan Lake – dancing swans, a love triangle, good versus evil. Or Coppelia, where a doll comes to life. Sleeping Beauty is an absolute fairy tale, with a castle, an evil plot and a happy ending. Not every ballet has fantasy about it, but it’s a strong thread running through so many.

Perhaps it fits. Seeing characters dancing, you have to suspend your disbelief anyway – like with musicals, where characters burst into song at any moment. Not an everyday event! Ballet feels like it is set apart, an enchanted world. That lifts the spirits, boosts mood, opens up some time out from the everyday, from routines which might be boring or depressing.

Ballet firing the imagination? Not only is it fantastical, but narrative is so integral to ballet too. It can be wonderful just to watch dance for the movement alone, but the narrative adds drive and purpose. It’s easier to focus on the dancing and lose yourself in the spectacle if you’re following a strong story or plot, wondering how it will all unfold. If you already know the story, seeing how every familiar twist and turn of the plot is presented is compelling. Narrative is known to have real impact on wellbeing, which is why drama, theatre, film and books all draw in such audiences or so many readers.

And ballet combining music and movement? Music’s wellbeing benefits have become well known, the most recognized of all the arts. Music lifts mood, calms, expresses feelings, and can draw out response in people even with advanced dementia, who struggle to communicate. Combining music with movement, then, builds another element into music for wellbeing – whether dancing yourself or seeing others dance, you respond to the music as ballet steps fit the rhythm and mood.

Think about trying ballet for wellbeing – either dancing, or enjoying ballet performed by others. Open up a new space for boosting your mood. It would be great if you have thoughts to share. Just go to Medley’s Facebook group https://www.facebook.com/groups/359291215486002 Thank you.

A Virtual Walk

Who wouldn’t seize an opportunity to spend half an hour enjoying a walk in the woods or by the sea – by virtual reality? If you were detained on a mental health ward, it would only be all the more welcome.

As demand continues to soar for mental health care, more and more patients also need to be admitted to hospital for in-patient care – and of these, some will be detained there under the Mental Health Act. With many of these patients unwilling to be there, it’s no wonder that such wards may feel negative, depressing environments.

It was in just such a setting that an experiment used virtual reality to reduce stress levels, a year or two ago. King’s College London led the experiment as part of their research into clinical uses of AI in mental health care.

Patients could experience being in a natural setting in the great outdoors, walking in a forest or along a seashore. What a welcome change of scene. Virtual reality could transport them far away from the ward. No wonder too, then, that patients wanted to continue the experience for longer than researchers intended.

Since this initial experiment, it’s also been extended to staff. With stress levels spiralling amidst NHS staff, maybe this will be replicated.

Immersive, multi-sensory, stimulating and energising: virtual reality throws open the doors. It overcomes distance and ill health. Imagine replicating the experiment with patients in other hospital departments, maybe patients enduring a long stay in hospital. With harsh lighting and few windows, hospitals can feel unfamiliar worlds of their own, so virtual reality could become a haven. Care home residents might also enjoy virtual reality as most go outside only rarely.

For people who are housebound or bedbound, virtual reality could also restore a window on the wider world. Even for most people with mobility issues who do go out and about, the countryside is less accessible because of uneven ground. Virtual reality overcomes this too.

No, virtual reality is not real. It could be confusing, particularly to people with cognition issues or dementia. Coming back to reality once the experience ends could be distressing. But it can enrich life where it is needed. I wonder too if it could form part of a deeper “remote experience” of nature? People could be sent or presented with natural materials to touch, look at and think about – pressed leaves or flowers maybe, stones or berries. They could also have a chance to respond to the virtual reality in creative ways – maybe drawing or painting, maybe making a collage or word picture about what they’ve experienced and how they felt. All this might make the virtual reality more tangible and preserve its memory, linking real and unreal.

So many remote initiatives started during Covid, but they’re still needed by many, many people who are unable to go out one way or another. AI might feel a world away from the natural world, but it’s a tool to help reconnect with just that.

Do you have any thoughts or experiences to share? Just go to Medley’s Facebook group https://www.facebook.com/groups/359291215486002 Thank you.

Under The Stars

Do you know the names and order of the planets in our solar system? Do you follow NASA’s every move? Are you excited when space science succeeds, as when asteroid dust was brought to Earth recently? This is World Space Week, so I’m thinking how experiencing outer space could help lift mood and boost wellbeing in our everyday here.

I know little about the wonders of space, about light years and stars and nebulae. I never watch TV, so I haven’t seen shows like The Sky At Night, and I don’t own a telescope to see the full night sky. I don’t know a lot about constellations or satellites, although recently I enjoyed seeing the International Space Station moving across the sky. But the very vastness of space that feels confusing and overwhelming is also awesome and uplifting. I may not understand the figures or the complex systems, but I do enjoy seeing images from space, photography of space phenomena. It’s like they transport us into space, allowing us to glimpse another world. Colours, light, it’s all inspiring. It injects drama and mystery into the familiar.

Seeing space images transforms my perspective. Perhaps only for a moment or for a while, but it opens a door on the vastness of the universe. That might just help balance or even rein in overthinking. It won’t change the cost of living, strikes, ill health, or whatever overshadows life day to day. But it’s another outlook on the world.

Outer space can also awaken, or confirm, faith in God, who holds all life in being.

Maybe you have insomnia, or feel depressed or anxious at night time. Watching the night sky, learning to recognize some constellations and how the sky changes, might help time go by, lift spirits and make night feel more familiar, less forbidding, more beautiful.

Art and craft can open up ways to interact with outer space, either creating artwork or seeing what others create. Experimenting with making a simple mobile of the solar system using card, paint and thread helped me learn the planets at last! By contrast, Luke Jerram’s striking Museum of the Moon installation has travelled the world, being seen by crowds in very different settings, from cathedrals to quays.

Music is another way to connect with outer space, to feel and express the thrill and awe of somewhere so other, so different. Holst’s Planets Suite is classical music at its most dramatic and majestic. Then there are songs like Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. And there are John Williams’ scores to the Star Wars movies, which resonate with power and might, and – to fans – build a whole fantasy world.

Yes, light pollution is a major problem. Now that some places get designated as Dark Sky areas, it just shows how rare it has become to have a good view of the night sky – but also just how prized that view is.

Sound Of Silence

Do you know the Paul Simon song The Sound Of Silence? That might feel like a contradictory title for a song! Music for wellbeing is now recognised to be very positive. Do you agree? And how do you feel silence compares when it comes to boosting mood, or calming you?

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.com

Of course most of our time is spent with neither music or silence – but a varying background hum of traffic or aeroplanes or lawnmowers or birds calling or appliances running or ringtones going off. So music and silence alike can be a refreshing change. Never before have people heard so much or such varied sound every day as today. Imagine a household two or three hundred years ago. There would have been sounds we hear less now, such as the constant beat of horses’ hooves, but overall there was far less auditory stimulus than in the 21^st century. Is this positive or negative?

I like silence, or near silence – as I sit here now, I can hear rain falling outside, and my clock ticking, and the distant hum of a radio. It’s restful and calming and restorative. But silence can weigh heavily, be oppressive or blank. That might depend on where you are and what you’re doing or feeling. Silence can help you think through an issue, but it can be negative if you’re overthinking. Silence opens up space to dwell on thoughts – space that may not be welcome, or bearable.

For some people, music aids concentration. For others it can become distracting and tiring. Just this one example highlights one of the most complex issues in wellbeing, how different we all are. And that’s before you get on to specific music tastes or tastes changing over time. I find I need music more when the weather’s wet, cloudy and cold, when hearing a lively beat feels like seeing the sun come out. Then again, the style of music people find helpful in particular situations will vary. If you are sad or distressed then music that is calming or beautiful might just be too nostalgic. How any of us responds to any one song at any one time is totally unpredictable.

I think striking a balance, weaving silence and music into our lives is very important. I enjoy most music, but only for limited periods of time. Some people I know have created playlists for every occasion, dedicating hours to crafting just the lists they want. Others listen to radio all day long, and feel it lifts their mood and the atmosphere of their home. I couldn’t bear to hear music playing for so long.

One way music helps wellbeing is by creating time and space away from the intensity of thought or experience, time and space for the mind to refuel and clear and recharge. Some people say this is music masking feelings, as if this is a negative. Yes, feelings need to be thought through, shared, unearthed, rooted out maybe. But that isn’t going to happen all the time, or to solve them all the time. Music may not in itself root out the issues, but it can be one way to explore them, or to endure, or to thrive.

Do you feel music or silence is more positive for you? It would be great if you have thoughts to share. Just go to Medley’s Facebook group https://www.facebook.com/groups/359291215486002 Thank you.

Learning From Experience

This week marks a milestone for me: 3 years since I set up Medley, my online arts for wellbeing initiative. That time feels like it has flown. I am so happy to have stumbled upon working in arts for wellbeing, and so enjoy all that I do with it. As someone new to the sector when I set up Medley, I’ve also learned a lot over those three years. Some experiences and observations stand out.

Feedback from participants is so helpful as I’ve experimented with what people enjoy (or don’t!). Sometimes I’ve asked people to sum up how creativity helps them, or whether they found an event calming, fulfilling, positive or confidence-building. “Calming” is the most common response, alongside other words such as “freedom”, “immersion”, “release”, “soothing” and “perspectives”. I would agree with all of these.

Striking a balance is so important – suggesting themes and specific activity ideas, but with the freedom for participants to interpret these for themselves, maybe by using different media or styles. Then there’s also balancing regular activity over time with one-off events, and resources for people to use in their own time with live groups. Variety is so important as well, and so is community. Sharing how they get on with an activity and seeing how others interpret the idea adds far more layers to the experience, for participants and leader alike! I really enjoy connecting with the people who take part in my art challenges and other events, brought together by shared creativity. Art unites by linking up people who might never have met.

I’ve seen how far more women than men take part in art for wellbeing, and how digital exclusion can limit older people’s opportunities to take part in virtual activities. Lack of confidence is another significant barrier, particularly with drawing – while craft can be seen as more accessible. And I’m seeing issues with monitoring and measuring impact, which can feel artificial and forced, and where existing tools – like wellbeing scales – may not fit.

Learning what’s happening in the sector as a whole is exciting too. The range of artforms and the ways of sharing these with people in all different situations is inspiring. Macrame workshops, a theatre company using Shakespeare speeches to talk about mental health, singing and dance groups for people who have Parkinson’s, and a creative writing group for people with chronic health conditions: to name but a few. The more initiatives I come across, the more ideas I think I would like to try sharing myself as I develop Medley!

What it all comes down to is creativity, experimenting with colour and form and line, or with other artforms, restoring some sense of joy and calm. Thank you to everyone who’s on this journey with me.