Education and Training Roundtable 2: Creative health - workforce development & wellbeing

This online roundtable was hosted on Tuesday 21st March 2023.
In order to fully embed creative health into health and social care and wider systems, it will be necessary to nurture a skilled workforce and a health and social care sector that fully understands the benefits of creativity. This roundtable identified existing opportunities for education, training and workforce development in creative health, and considered how skilled creative health practitioners can be best utilised in the delivery of health and social care. We also considered how creativity can support the health and wellbeing of the workforce.
We heard from a range of speakers covering research, practice, policy and lived experience and there was an opportunity for audience Q&A.
The session was chaired by Nancy Hey, Executive Director of the What Works Centre for Wellbeing and NCCH Trustee. Context Setting by Victoria Hume, Director of the Culture, Health & Wellbeing Alliance
Panellist mini-presentations:
Creative health training within health education: Nick Ponsillo, Director of Philip Barker Centre for Creative Learning at The University of Chester; Prof Vicky Ridgway, Associate Dean, Faculty of Health, Medicine and Society, University of Chester; Dr Ranjita Dhital- Pharmacist, Sculptor and Lecturer in Interdisciplinary Health Studies, Arts and Sciences Department, UCL; Dr Claire Howlin, Research Fellow in Creative Health, UCL;
Dr Louise Younie, GP and Clinical Reader in Medical Education at Queen Mary University of London; Sivakami Sibi, Medical Student; Hamaad Khan, Development Support, Global Social Prescribing Alliance.
Creative health and workforce wellbeing: Laura Waters - Head of Arts, Air Arts, University Hospitals of Derby and Burton NHS Foundation Trust;
Claire Cordeaux, Chief Executive Officer, British Association for Performing Arts Medicine; Dr Gail Allsopp - Executive Medical Director, British Association for Performing Arts Medicine.
Training the creative health workforce: Hannah Sercombe, London Arts and Health and MASc in Creative Health Alumni; Dr. Julia Puebla Fortier, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and Research Associate, Arts & Health South West.
Agenda and Speakers Biographies
ncch.org.uk/up...
The Creative Health Review
This roundtable is the fifth in a series running throughout the year as part of the National Centre for Creative Health (NCCH) and All-Party Parliamentary Group on Arts, Health and Wellbeing (APPG) Creative Health Review. The review will highlight the potential for creative health to help tackle pressing issues in health and social care and more widely, including health inequalities and the additional challenges we face as we recover from Covid-19. A panel of commissioners, with a wide breadth of expertise, will translate the findings from roundtables and a public call for contributions into recommendations for policymakers to encourage and inform the development of a cross-governmental creative health strategy.
We also welcome your participation in the review.
Find out how you can contribute and about forthcoming roundtables - ncch.org.uk/cr...

[@Hallam001]

25 years ago, I led a team based at Colchester Institute in developing the UK's first MA in Health and the Arts (NB not a therapy programme). The degree was validated by a neighbouring institution, Anglia Polytechnic University (now Anglia Ruskin Uni), within at that time a 'regional university' structure. It was a fantastic course that drew on the disciplines of health, music, visual arts and literature + research, and attracted students from across these disciplines. The critical stumbling block at that time was the failure of health service funders to see the value of the arts for their staff. Eventually, the programme was a casualty of a university restructuring. Teaching was demanding yet incredibly stimulating as were the regular challenges to conventional assessment methods! I wish you all success in your work, Dr. Terry Smyth, Community Fellow, Department of History, University of Essex.