This page highlights current research projects and evaluations in the region and across the country to help build a picture of the current research agenda. If you would like to submit information about significant research or evaluations you are involved in please complete the Project / research information submission form.

Over recent years a number of university research groups interested in arts and health have emerged. These are likely to be a very useful resource in keeping up to date with current and past research projects and so we have decided to include links to them from here.

Those groups are:

• Arts co-ordinator research, Clore Leadership Programme (Wellcome Fellow 2008-9)
  I am carrying out a study into the skills, training needs and experiences of arts co-ordinators/curators in hospitals as part of my Clore Fellowship.
  
  If you’re in charge of an arts programme in a hospital and would like to be interviewed, please visit: www.josieaston.co.uk/study
  
  For more information contact Josie Aston: josie.aston@gmail.com - www.josieaston.co.uk
  
  
• The Centre for Medical Humanities
  The Centre for Medical Humanities is for the next five years devoted to a research programme exploring 'Medicine and Human Flourishing' - aimed at understanding the human side of medicine and exploring in particular the relationship of health and medicine to wider notions of wellbeing. A key component of the work will be the examination of the place of creativity and the arts in contributing to healthy lives.
  
  For more information please see the centre' website at: www.dur.ac.uk/cmh/
  
  
• Anglia Ruskin University/University of Central Lancashire
  The two universities collaborated on a major national study on mental health, social inclusion and the arts, for DCMS and Doh.
  
  www.socialinclusion.org.uk/resources/index.php?subid=71
  
  www.uclan.ac.uk/facs/health/socialwork/research/mental health/projects/
  
  
• Arts and Health research Programme, University of West England
  The Arts and health research programme builds on established strands relating to music and visual arts, extending traditional methodologies to explore emergent issues in arts and health research.
  
  hsc.uwe.ac.uk/net/research/Default.aspx?pageid=229
  
  
• Arts for Health, Manchester Metropolitan University
  Based on 20 years experience in arts and health the centre is currently developing and expanding a portfolio of work in research.
  
  www.artsforhealth.org
  www.miriad.mmu.ac.uk/investtosave/
  
  
• East Midlands Arts and Health Research Group, Universities of Nottingham and Northampton
  Recently formed research group developing a programme of arts and health research.
  
  Contact Theo Stickley via: www.nottingham.ac.uk/nursing/stafflookup/
  
  
• Peninsula Medical School, Universities of Exeter and Plymouth
  Evaluation of the Upstream healthy living project in Devon.
  
  www.pms.ac.uk/pms/research/upstream.php
  www.upstream-uk.com/Evaluation.html
  
  

The Creativity and Health and Care Workshops programme, led by Dr. Emma Govan of Royal Holloway University, London and funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, is a series of investigative workshops aimed at interrogating the subject of creativity with an over-arching objective of extending the understanding of the problems and possibilities of applying creativity within the health and care sector.

The workshops will draw together an interdisciplinary panel of researchers who engage with the subject of the creative process from a range of perspectives, to allow the rigour of academic research to interact with the critical engagement of practitioners and policy makers. This will be accompanied by an open national symposium in March 2008.

Whilst acknowledging that the arts are only one manifestation of creativity, the proposed workshop programme recognises that the arts sector brings a special contribution to the health and care sector consisting of professionals who make it their job to practice creatively. The programme is interested to examine this creative practice rather than the art object/event as the bedrock of arts in health practice.

The workshops aim to engage with a number of questions concerning:

• The value of creativity to society – how might creative processes be harnessed to improve provision in health and care? Is creativity of value in its own right? Is creativity always healthy? How can creativity be evaluated?
• The distinction between creativity and innovation – what constitutes the creative process? How might the creative process be employed to encourage innovation? Is it possible to be creative without being innovative and innovative without being creative? What are the institutional expectations of creativity?
• The role of risk in creativity – what conditions are necessary for creativity to thrive? What may prevent/encourage people to enter into a creative process? What is at risk personally and institutionally in a creative encounter? What are the consequences of creative endeavour?
• Individual/institutional creativity – What are the personal/institutional imperatives for creativity? How might creativity affect institutional culture? Is creativity sustainable? What conditions are necessary for creativity to thrive?

The resulting material aims to provide some useful theoretical underpinnings for the field, help develop more subtle tools for reflection and evaluation and ultimately to develop some new insights on how to bring to fruition more creative working practices within the health and care sector.

For further information please contact Dr. Emma Govan on e.govan@rhul.ac.uk

Dead Earnest is a touring, training and facilitation Theatre Company who find ways to encourage the recognising, challenging and changing of behaviours.

Dead Earnest are currently designing an active research project into learnt and acquired human behaviour. Through research, performance and exploration we will interrogate the level of control individuals have over behaviour, and behavioural traits and the role genetic science has to play in informing our opinions about the conduct which makes up our lives. We are interested in the extent to which behaviour could be the result of our genetic inheritance, the implication that such findings would have on personal rights and responsibilities and the impact that such thinking has on ones own sense of identity and autonomy.

Beginning from research into an "anxiety gene" Dead Earnest want to work with partners in scientific and academic disciplines to explore and define the biological, ethical and social context for behaviour. We want to ask questions of how realistic our aim of recognising, challenging and most importantly changing unhelpful behaviour is in cultures where the influence of biology and society could predestine our choices and behaviour. We will investigate how arts experiences and specifically drama could be used to break individuals out of their default reactions and prejudices to arrive at more useful behavioural strategies.

We will ask to what extent the simulation of scenarios which drama creates encourages a greater degree of meta-cognition regarding our own actions, options and opinions. We will ask is social behaviour similar to physiology, with specific stimulus types leading to ‘knee-jerk’ reactions, or do we have a greater control over our more complex responses to the world we live in.

We are interested in ‘high impact’ behavioural traits such as self-injury, addiction and mental well-being including anxiety, but also in the everyday minutia and believe small incremental changes can have a big positive impact.

This project seeks to pose questions about where our behaviour comes from, and where scientific discoveries may lead us in the future.

For more Information contact:
Dan Ramsden: daniel@deadearnest.co.uk
Ashley Barnes: ashley@deadearnest.co.uk
Web: www.deadearnest.co.uk