The arts and health sector is being mapped out by potential funders using a tight definition. Creative Scotland (link 1) sees this activity as being led by professional artists, with explicit artistic and health/wellbeing objectives, and designed to improve health and wellbeing.
Continue reading “What Lies Beyond Objectives and Definitions in Arts and Mental Health?”
The Scottish Graduate School for Arts & Humanities (SGSAH) and Scottish Graduate School of Social Science (SGSSS) have been invaluable to my PhD experience providing training in research approaches, methods, different ways of thinking about the world and technical training with courses on how to edit and write.
Continue reading “Looking Back… to See How Far I’ve Come Already…”
Matt Baker’s post on a New Approach to Culture in Scotland asks – “perhaps it is time to ask a fundamental question about the way we do culture in Scotland? Could we consciously support a culture of participation and popular ownership of culture as a key part of our national toolkit towards a just transition from both Covid and Climate Change?”
The search for concepts I feel comfortable with to describe arts, culture, health and wellbeing has been a long one. Theories and concepts have been described as a lens to see the world or a framework to scaffold the thesis. For me it has felt more like trying on many coats.
Continue reading “Fetching a Coat: Finding a Concept that Fits Arts, Culture, Health & Wellbeing”
CCSE were partners to the Open Mind Summit along with Future Paisley, Renfrewshire Leisure, Kibble. The second annual summit hosted by Create Paisley launched the day before World Mental Health Day. It explored the role of creativity and culture in improving mental health and wellbeing for children and young people.
Continue reading “Create Paisley’s Second Open Minds Summit”
As an approach, co-production has increasingly come to the forefront, both in research and in design of services. This has led to greater attention and effort being made to draw on the knowledge of those with lived experience, whose voices count and, attempts to understand how they count.
Continue reading “Fridays Can be Fun: Spring into Methods 2020”
Exploring what arts and culture have to offer efforts to prevent loneliness is the focus of my PhD research. Loneliness is a subjective feeling of a gap between the relationships a person wants and what they have.
Continue reading “Arts and Loneliness: Reflections from Lockdown”
As I write we’re entering our fifth week of Lockdown and I am currently reorienting the ‘who with’ and ‘how with’ part of my PhD. In the meantime, the feedback between theory and practice will have to be through applying a conceptual perspective to my own life.
Continue reading “Being Neither Productive or Non-Productive”
There’s one benefit of what my PhD colleague calls Interdisciplinary Imposter Syndrome, I feel I can be part of both the Scottish Graduate School of Social Science (SGSSS) and Scottish Graduate School for Arts & Humanities (SGSAH).
Continue reading “Health Inequalities & Mechanisms”
I’m now four months into my PhD in the field of arts and health within the context of cultural regeneration. I have a professional background in economic development consultancy and working as a research assistant at Citizens Advice Scotland.
Continue reading “Doctoral Research: Finding a Way Through the First Phases of Research”