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Sensory Storytelling, Imagination and Wellbeing - Sharing Practice webinar

Date
Date
Thursday 10 March 2022, 10:00-12:30pm
Location
Online / Zoom (Via registration)

This Zoom webinar forms part of the Sadler Seminar Series ‘Sensory Storytelling, Imagination, and Wellbeing’, which is convened by Drs Freya Bailes, Anna Madill, and Maria Kapsali. It is open to the public; please register through this link.

A multi-discipline project, this event brings together speakers from different backgrounds and approaches to explore how sensory storytelling helps us to question and understand relationships between imagination and wellbeing. Speaking at this event are:


Simon Procter

Simon Procter is a music therapist working for Nordoff Robbins, a charity which provides music therapy services across Scotland, Wales and England. As a practitioner he has worked in both medical and non-medical mental health services, and as a researcher he is primarily an ethnographer.

We will experience an example of music therapy work co-created by a person in an advanced stage of dementia and a music therapist working in a care home. For this person, once highly capable, language has almost completely receded, movement is severely impaired and it is unclear what is cognitively possible. Their interaction therefore becomes an interpersonal encounter which unfolds moment by moment. We will consider how music which is technically quite simple can be used to enable experience-able interaction and apparently meaningful communication, drawing on the tradition of indexing, on DeNora’s musical event schema and more broadly on the notion of musical affordances as a way of conceiving what music-making might have to offer to particular people in particular places at particular times. 

A case will be made for conceiving of music therapy as creative collaboration rather than medical-style treatment. Although primarily non-verbal, it has its own narrative as events unfold over time. And although someone living with advanced dementia may conventionally be considered to have little in the way of either imagination or wellbeing, it is the responsibility of the music therapist to musically enable the imagination and wellbeing that is possible for each person. 


Professor Sarah Kettley

Professor Sarah Kettley is Chair of Material and Design Innovation at Edinburgh College of Art, The University of Edinburgh. Her research spans disciplines in order to develop design methodologies for emerging and embedded technologies. She leads multidisciplinary teams to engage in critical relational design research with mental health and wellbeing sectors.

Lifelines: users and designers as persons in relation 

The use of self in research is a concept well-developed in health care ethics and care professions, while the interpersonal relationship is highly valued in psychotherapy research and practice. Inspired by this paradigm, the talk presents a discussion on the sometimes deeply relational nature of doing design with users when viewed through the lens of Carl Rogers’ Person-Centred Approach (PCA) (1961/1967). A case study is used to illustrate an encounter of relational depth as experienced by a student/participant team using the Lifelines creative brief to co-design prosthetics.  

Lifelines is a material and formal activity, developed by Jivan Astfalck (2008, 2011), in which a person’s life is represented by ten significant moments through the creative use of materials and found objects. Originally used as part of an interpretive (psycho-analytical) framework, this talk discusses the method’s facility to also support relational depth or moments of encounter in the design process as understood by the PCA (Schmid 2013). The case study suggests that Lifelines may be a tool for transformative research, encouraging engagement with both the self and the other as whole persons, thereby strengthening the “ethical reflex” necessary in design (Vandenberghe and Slegers 2016, 514). 


Radhika Goswami

Trained as a social anthropologist and practicing theatre, I find there is an overlap of concept concerning how the body manipulates society and how in turn the effects of society are borne by the body. Thus, I delve into stage work as well facilitation which enable me to explore this interaction of the mind, body and society as a whole. 

Radhika will present:

1. A brief idea of previous academic work which informs my practice such my research manual on applied theatre techniques and life skills for adolescents to transform conflict, developed during my tenure as a research fellow with Foundation for social Transformation, Guwahati. secondly my MA thesis on the intersection of Protest culture and Popular culture in Manipur and its applicability in the wider field of applied theatre 

2. Our two stage performances from AGORA- Sentenced and Performed Pieces. Both pieces use multiple mediums of storytelling including spoken word, physical theatre, dance and music. 

3. Our Podcast – Living with the river and share circle- All EARS!, to discuss the scope of work while working with experiential themes and auditory mediums of communication that has immense potential for imagination and insights 

4. The previous, current and future facilitation projects we have carried out with various communities in the grassroots through workshops, street theatre etc. 


Dr Maria Kapsali

I am an Associate Professor in Physical Performance at the University of Leeds and a performance practitioner, seeking to mobilise embodied knowledge as a way of engaging with human and non human others in creative, social and cultural contexts. My work is located at the intersections between movement/somatic disciplines and technology. As part of an interdisciplinary team, I have developed , an intuitive and affordable system for movement sonification and with Dr Scott Palmer, I have developed the immersive tours app, a mobile phone platform for audio walks. My monograph Performer Training and Technology: Preparing Our Selves was shortlisted for the TaPRA Monograph Award in 2021. 

Maria will discuss Inside Yellow Sound, a multisensory, interactive installation that was based on Wassily Kandinsky’s stage composition Yellow Sound (1912). The installation utilized a custom-made movement sonification system which enabled the installation participants to animate light and sound material through their movement. Drawing on Kandinsky’s theoretical writing as well as on exit interviews with participants, this presentation will explore the way a responsive technology rendered the body as the locus of meaning making within an aesthetic environment. The presentation will first focus on the way the dramaturgical as well as physical structure of installation invited synesthetic responses and fueled the imagination. It will then consider the effect this environment had on the participants and whether this effect can be understood in relation to wider concerns around well being


Dr Raginie Duara

Dr. Raginie Duara has an interest in understanding the youth culture and the various issues faced by this group of people. She seeks to understand how such issues and coping mechanisms sit within the broader historical and cultural context whilst dealing with challenges of establishing an identity and a ‘place in this world’. With her expertise in qualitative research methods, she is currently working as a Research Fellow (School of Psychology, University of Leeds) on youth substance addiction in Assam using visual methods – photo-led interviews, posters and film-making.

The project titled, ‘The Big Picture: Adapting photovoice to enhance psychological, social and cultural insights into and prevention and treatment of youth substance use in India’ was conducted between September 2018 and February 2022, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and the Arts and Humanities Research Council. The overall aim of this project was to increase knowledge, enhance the voice of young people, and inform practice with respect to youth substance use in Assam, India. An arts-based approach was used to understand the lived experiences of young people resisting substance use (15-18 years old) and those in recovery from substance addiction (19-24 years old). Interviews were conducted using photos, and posters were developed using quotes and images from the interviews to communicate impactful messages based on their experiences. The current presentation focuses on the third part of this study that involved active participation of young people in the development of short films based on their stories of resilience with the aim of sending a powerful message about resisting substance use, destigmatising addiction, and encouraging support for recovery.


All speakers will convene at the end of the event for a Q&A with the attendees.