Winston Churchill Fellowship: Healing trauma with performing arts

My final stop on my fellowship travels saw me return to Connecticut, this time visiting Artreach in Norwich. Artreach is a peer-based project for people with psychiatric diagnoses, and uses a range of art forms to promote healing, self-expression, increased confidence and social support. In addition to meeting with the Executive Director, Becca, to hear about the impressive array of work taking place through Artreach, I was lucky enough to be able to attend a performance by Second Step Players, Artreach's theatre troupe that performs comedy sketches to challenge stigma surrounding mental illness. The sketches performed by Second Step Players were funny and poignant. Spending time with the cast and production team, it was clear that they were really invested in the work and that they had formed a strong, supportive social network through Artreach. Participants spoke with me about how beneficial Artreach had been for them, allowing them to express themselves, p...

For the penultimate stop on my travels I returned to New York City. I visited The Possibility Project, a long-running theatre programme to 'empower teenagers to transform their lives and communities'. The project runs a number of different programs and I was fortunate enough to attend a rehearsal with the participants on the foster care programme. All participants must audition to be part of the programme, although no one is chosen on the basis of talent. The auditions are an opportunity to see whether a teenager would be comfortable with taking part in acting, dance and singing sessions and to find out more about the programme. This is followed by a nine month rehearsal period. Participants discuss the social issues that are affecting their lives, share personal accounts and improvise scenes based on real life experiences. Over the course of the rehearsal period the production team (largely made up of  the teenage participants) will develop a script for an origina...

I've been taking a little break from blogging for the last couple of weeks as I've been having some holiday time with no fellowship appointments. It has been restful and brilliant with lots of sightseeing in Memphis, New Orleans and New York. In this blog entry I'll be talking about my experience attending a Bessel van der Kolk conference at the Cape Cod Institute which I attended just before my holiday started. The Cape Cod Institute has been running annual continuing education conferences every summer for 40 years, all aimed at mental health professionals. I was so excited to attend the conference with Dr van der Kolk, particularly as his ideas and writing largely formed the basis of the focus of my fellowship. Dr van der Kolk presented a range of approaches for working effectively with trauma. He encourages clinicians to have trained in a number of different approaches and interventions, as trauma recovery is neither linear nor simple and it may take...

Following my time in Ohio I travelled to Cape Cod, Massachusetts. In Cape Cod I had the opportunity to shadow Sam Holmstock, a talented and experienced musician. Sam facilitates a number of drumming classes with different populations and community groups in and around Cape Cod. I was lucky enough to be able to take part in some of Sam's classes, including the Drumming Through Trauma programme delivered through Cotuit Center for the Arts. Drumming Through Trauma is a weekly class that is primarily aimed at veterans suffering from PTSD, though it can also be accessed by other members of the community who have been affected by trauma in different contexts. The group meets each week for an hour and uses Conga drums to learn and play a series of rhythms. Many participants have been coming to the group for several years and it is clear that they have developed a level of proficiency as musicians. The group is also always open to new members, and Sam was a skilled teach...

Following a packed few days in NYC I travelled onwards to Warren, Ohio for a visit based around the Institute for Creative Mindfulness, created by trauma specialist Jamie Marich. I had a bust few days and had the opportunity to talk with both Jamie Marich and her colleague Ramona Skriiko about their practice and different approaches to working creatively with experiences of trauma. Ramona was kind enough to spend a day with me sharing insight into her work, which incorporates expressive arts therapy and somatic experiencing. Ramona also shared with me techniques for visual journaling, a creative tool which can be used individually or in a group with other to help express, explore and process emotions in a creative and containing way: The final part of my trip to Ohio was learning how to facilitate Dancing Mindfulness, an arts and mindfulness approach developed by Jamie Marich. Dancing Mindfulness is an activity that can be enjoyed by anyone, with particular benefi...

Following an inspiring and thought provoking couple of weeks in South Florida, I travelled back north and arrived in New York City to spend three days learning about Forum Theatre with Theatre of the Oppressed NYC. Owing to dramatic and stormy weather my flight was delayed and I ended up arriving in NYC at 3am, allowing a very few hours sleep. Luckily the time I spent with Theatre of the Oppressed NYC was stimulating and engaging and I felt remarkably unaffected by my sleep deprivation. Forum Theatre is one of the techniques that falls under Theatre of the Oppressed, developed by Augusto Boal who drew on the ideas of Paulo Friere. Forum Theatre aims to enable groups of people who are experiencing oppression to use theatre to enact their lived experiences. The audience are invited to discuss and comment on the problems facing the oppressed person(s) and suggest alternate courses of action that the protagonist (or their allies) could take. Rather than verbally explain their idea...

Following my visit to the Post Traumatic Stress Center in New Haven, Connecticut I have travelled onwards to the second destination of my Fellowship; South Florida. I have been gradually adjusting to driving on the right-hand side of the road, and I am captivated by the tropical climate, palm trees and frequent sight of little lizards scuttling around everywhere you go, which is very different to the UK! I have come to South Florida to learn about the Camp Shine programme, part of Shine MSD. The programme has been developed to meet the needs of community members affected by a mass shooting incident, and Camp Shine offers drama therapy, music therapy and art therapy to support young people from the local area. I have been welcomed by a fantastic team of clinicians and it is a privilege to see such skilled and innovative work taking place. It feels clear from everything I am learning and observing that arts-based therapies have huge potential for enabling expression and processi...

Since my last blog post, I completed the rest of my visit to the Post Traumatic Stress Center (PTSC) in New Haven, Connecticut. I was honoured to spend time attending the Strong Leaders summer programme. The programme works with a group of high school students over a three week period. The sessions use drama-based games and exercises focused around a certain theme. Examples of themes include trust and boundaries. The exercises naturally lead into periods of discussion and reflection, providing the participants with the opportunity to talk about the issues brought up and reflect on how these link to their own experiences. There are times where there will be opportunity for the facilitators to bring in psychoeducative material if this naturally links to the issues that have arisen in the group. The Strong Leaders programme culminates in the participants planning and creating a social action project and an issue that is important to them. This could take one of many forms, for exa...

After weeks of planning and liaision, my fellowship travels have begun! I flew into NYC and then travelled onward to New Haven, Connecticut. By the time I arrived I calculated that I'd been travelling for around 19 hours non-stop, and I was feeling quite disorientated as a result! I spent a couple of days acclimatising and adjusting to the time difference before I had any meetings. I'd recommend other Fellows to also allow themselves some settling in time after travelling long haul, I was so pleased that my schedule had worked out this way. The day after I arrived I stumbled across a play which ended up being really relevant to my fellowship- Elders & Newcomers at Long Wharf Theatre  https://www.longwharf.org/ . This is part of the New Haven Play Project, and the performance was the culmination of a year of theatre workshops and storytelling sessions with Long Wharf's 'community partners'. In this case the community partners were The Towers (residential commun...

I am thrilled to learn I have been awarded a Winston Churchill Fellowship. My Fellowship will see me travel to the USA to learn about how performing arts can be used to support healing from trauma. I work in a busy clinical service at a domestic abuse charity, and I am particularly grateful to my managers for supporting my Fellowship application. The therapeutic benefits of the arts are championed by experts in the fields of trauma, including Bessel van der Kolk (author of The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind and Body in the Healing of Trauma). I plan to learn about a range of models for using performing arts to assist those traumatised by abuse, violence and adverse life experiences. My aim is to bring back this learning to the UK to inform service development and help develop creative and empowering models for helping people improve wellbeing, reduce distress and reclaim their lives following experiences of trauma.