I Am: Who Am I? Experts road-test week one
To coincide with my Summer 2012 exhibition, Making an Exhibition of Myself, at the SGDP building at the Institute of Psychiatry, I have funding from the SLaM charitable trustees to run 2 lots of 2 week workshops for 8 – 10 service users at the Maudsley and Bethlem sites, on the theme of autobiography: for myself and participants to explore the potentially therapeutic role of working with such material within an art context.
I recently trialled week one of the two week workshops with a group of “experts”. I am very grateful to Ali, Colin, Garry, Helen, Sarah N, Sarah W and Störm for their participation and on-going feedback as I continue to test and refine all aspects of the workshop’s experience.
I am hoping that these experts will similarly road test week two’s programme later this year. Their work from week two, will, with their permission, also be posted on this blog.
I hope to run the week one workshop with SLaM (the South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust) staff who work with service users, later this year (2011). Week one’s shape and content (generating autobiographical material and then making, from that material) means that it can also be run as a stand-alone workshop: and if the feedback from the first staff group is positive, my aim is to have it available to SLaM front-line staff, to contribute to their continuous professional development (CPD).
I also believe that it could make a very effective team building workshop, so I will also seek to run it with SLaM multi-disciplinary teams (MDTs). At a time when the whole organisation (SLaM) is undergoing radical change and reorganisation, I hope this may be an effective way to foster newly organised teams getting to know each other in a more holistic and non-hierarchical way.
Below are the badges made during the week one workshop; those which participants were happy to place in the public domain. I will similarly be posting the badges made in subsequent workshops.
Near the end of next year’s exhibition, there will be an event, funded by SGDP, where all participants (staff, service users and experts) will be invited to wear some or one of their badges.
Some comments from the workshop participants:
“The workshop has been very thought provoking with regards to where I’ve been, where I am, and where I’m going.”
“I found it a beautifully sensitive and simple framework of thinking, feeling and doing. Encouraging the participant to see the complex in the simple and vice versa.”
“I had the chance to look at different aspects of what I think about myself. I rarely have a chance to do this in a group setting and it was good to share some of this with others.”
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