This post follows me initial response to the Unit 8 South London Story Lab (SLSL) brief, with initial primary and secondary research, project proposal and project aims.
Task
This project is a chance to research a particular place deeply, visit and record it in every way that you can think of, engage with the people there, observe the communities there. Then work with this information to deliver it to your audience as a story, in innovative ways-
Part 1: Research and engage with a place assigned to you.
Part 2: Develop a strategy to deliver this story in some direct way so that you can see and hear your audience, and work together as a year group to organise the event at Peckham Levels.
Part 3: Communicate your story to the public and gather direct responses from them, understand the effect and success of it.
Hart Club
Working in a focus group our assigned location was Hart Club in Waterloo. Hart club is a charity led organisation encouraging neurodiversity in the arts, exhibiting work with the aims to build confidence, community and well-being. They work closely with different organisations who run art clubs for neurodiverse artists, providing a space for them to exhibit the works created during these workshops.
Check them out at https://hartclub.org/
We contacted Hart Club who suggested we work with one of their art groups, The Great Grey, who work with people with early diagnosis of dementia. The group is more of a community setting, although led by an art therapist.
Initially we sat in with The Great Grey to see how they work as a group, in the aims to run our own art workshop. Cress, the art therapist, runs the group in a very relaxed environment, playing music and having a tea and cake break. She stressed the importance of encouraging the clients to make what they want, acting as a helping hand and not enforcing our own styles on them.
After the first session we met with Cress and Helen, the founder of Hart, to discuss how to move forward in our project. One of the main concerns was safeguarding, as we would be working with vulnerable people it would be important to not be voyeuristic in collecting our stories, instead to work with them as a group and let a natural story evolve. We would have to research and gain an understanding of the difficulties the group experience with dementia, but not make this the main focus of discussion as there is a concern of exploitation.
As the group focuses on a therapeutic pathway for the clients, we would need to work closely with Cress and follow her direction when formulating a workshop so as not to disrupt the therapeutic process.
Finally, if we were to show the group's work we would need to make formal consent forms to be signed, and also ensure we don't fall through on any promises in terms of exhibiting the work as this could be debilitating to their confidence.
This first meeting brought us a range of problems we would need to solve through the project: How can we create a workshop which helps us discover 'stories' without being too intrusive? How can we formulate a workshop which has a positive therapeutic aim? Finally, how can we exhibit the work created with consideration of safeguarding and ensuring we include everybody's work?
What is Dementia?
To begin this project I needed to complete research on the type of people I would be working with the gain a strong understanding of the struggles they face and the aims for therapeutic care.
Dementia is a syndrome which affects brain functionality, causing problems with:
Memory loss
Thinking speed, mental sharpness, and quickness
LanguageÂ
Understanding and judgementÂ
MoodÂ
Movement and capability to complete daily tasks
The two most common types of dementia are Alzheimer's Disease and Vascular dementia.Â
Alzheimer's Disease is a progressive condition causing; disorientation, memory loss, anxiety, depression, hallucinations, personality changes, issues with language and issues with self-care. The Disease affects 1 in 14 people over the age of 65, and 1 in 6 of people aged over 80. There is no cure for the disease yet medication is available to alleviate symptoms and steps can be taken to keep the sufferer living independently as long as possible.Â
Vascular Dementia, is caused by reduced blood flow to the brain causing a decline of brain function, and a development of dementia symptoms. Again there is no cure for this type of dementia, however as this type is caused by a medical condition, lifestyle changes and medical intervention can help slow it down.Â
Sourced via:
Art Therapy
I chose Hart as my location because of my post-graduate aim to study Art Psychotherapy. Although I already have insight into the topic I felt it was vital for this project to research some of the main aims and processes of art as a therapeutic practice.
"Art therapy is a form of psychotherapy which uses art media as a primary source of expression and communication. Within this context art is used not as a diagnostic tool, but as a medium to express emotional issues which may be confusing or distressing."
- BAAT (British Association of Art Therapists)
In this video the client discusses how art-therapy allowed her to visually communicate the difficult body-image issues she was struggling with. The sessions allowed her to channel different difficult emotions such as anger through her art. Finally she felt that the art she was creating provided a distraction from her mental illness, it helped build her confidence and helped her discover a new passion.
In this video the client explains how art therapy allowed her to discuss the elements of her eating disorder which are often difficult to explain such as her relationships to food and meal-times. She discusses how art-therapy allowed her to look back onto her past emotions, which allowed her to recognise her own recovery.
Workshop Research
From our site visit we knew we wanted to run a workshop with The Great Grey, in order to gather stories for the final piece. Cress discussed with us how sometimes the group felt a lack of confidence when it came to showing their work, she also discussed with us how the group liked working with tactile parts. We therefore decided to run a collage workshop as this would alleviate the pressure of providing the group's own drawings, and was something tactile we knew the group would enjoy.
My group members and I had different styles of collage; Kelsey and I like to cut and stick from fashion magazines, while Elina and Tracey prefer to collage colours, patterns and textures. I therefore looked into collage artists who combine both these areas.
I particularly like the work of Robert Rauschenberg, he has a really interesting way of combining found image with fine art overlays of pattern and colour, to really cultivate a sense of emotion.
We then needed to formulate a theme for the workshop. As a group, we really liked the way Hart focused on the idea that anyone can be an artist, giving light to people are often excluded from the art world. We decided a theme for our story could be how art makes people feel and how anyone can be an artist with snippets which tell the stories of Hart Club and The Great Grey. Our intention for the story could be to change the perspectives of our audience, who would primarily be art students from UAL. To find out more we conducted a survey of 26 UAL students asking them about art therapy, mental health and what defines an artist.
Check out the results here.
Survey Conclusion:
I think I've captured a range of results here. Most people agree that art can be done by anyone, yet other's have a more narrow-minded attitude toward art. It is interesting as all of the responses to question 6 were that art could objectively be anything so therefore to say not everyone can be an artist would be against their own logic. It will be interesting to ask similar questions to the clients at Hart Club who don't consider themselves artists.Â
As someone with a diagnosed mental health issue I think my responses regarding therapies and treatments are quite sad, 44% of people said they would have liked to be offered occupational therapies, yet only one person claimed to have already been offered this. There are issues within the mental health services in the UK which limit the access to different therapies.Â
From these results I plan to feature some of my favourite responses in designs for the exhibition, comparing them to the responses from the clients at Hart Club top gain a better understanding of how art and mental health correlate.
Outcome Research
For our outcome we initially considered the brief which required us to gather direct responses from our stories. We therefore were interested in creating some kind of interactive exhibition.
As a group we had two conflicting ideas about an outcome, Elina and Tracey wanted to create a video focusing on the muscle memory aspect of art therapy and dementia patients; whereas Kelsey and I wanted to focus on the links of art and mental health, through the stories gathered at Hart, creating some kind of showcase of work. We felt an interactive exhibition would allow the two elements to coexist with the interactive features joining them together.
Our main inspiration for an interactive exhibit was The Happy show by Stefan Sagmeister, this is an interactive gallery experience in LA. We felt The Happy Show had some really interesting interactive elements - most of which couldn't be acheived on a student budget - and combined art with education in a very though provoking way.
Find out more about The Happy Show and Sagmeister's work on his page at:
We also looked at some more achievable examples such as Dorota Grabkowska's What Made Me. The idea of this project was to map out what made the people of Birmingham by asking them five questions for them to answer by mapping out different coloured pieces of string across pegs representing answers. Via the Behance Gallery at : https://www.behance.net/gallery/4419469/WHAT-MADE-ME-Interactive-Public-Installation
Finally we explored ways of gathering feedback with ideas such as a 'feedback wall' such as the NYC Times Square Wishing Wall from New Years 2011. The Wishing Wall provided coloured post-it-notes asking the people of New York what their hopes and wishes were for the upcoming year. The notes were then collected and added to the confetti released when New Years hit.
Throughout the process of the project I decided to change our design for a final outcome to be a print edition which would enable me to feature everybody's work - seen as we had so much of it - but this research was still important when considering feedback collection for the SLSL.
Project Plan and Proposal
Project Proposal:
Project Aims: To create an educational exhibition about art therapy, using visual pieces to tell stories of clients, therapists and organisers within Hart Club. To educate the audience about the impacts of art therapy, how it works and how it impacts people with mental health issues. To encourage the audience to question their own assumptions of what is art, who can be an artist, and how art can benefit a community. I want to tell a story, not in the typical sense with a beginning a middle and an end; but instead plan to collect a range of small 'stories' gathering opinions on the correlations between art and mental health.
Personal Aims: To develop my photoshop and digital skills in the aims to strengthen my discipline in these areas. To focus on audience and consider outcome thoroughly in order to improve the communication aspect of my work.
Creative process plan: Work with Hart Club to create a workshop which encourages their clients to visually respond to a series of questions through collage; What is art to you? How has Hart Club changed your life? Who/What inspires your creativity?
Collect and develop visual responses to these questions.
Interview the lead art therapist working with the dementia art group, Into the Grey. Asking her a series of questions which investigate how art therapy works, why art therapy is important to both herself and the community, and what they consider art.
Interview the leader of Hart Club with similar questions.
Create visual response based on these interviews.
Collect visual response of my own thoughts and feelings throughout the creative process.
Outcome Aim: To create an exhibition space which features the film made by Tracey and Elina, and the collected work, interviews and stories from Hart through the media of a published magazine and/or displayed work. Provide an interactive element to the exhibit which allows us to collect feedback from our story.