Nursing for Creative Health Summit

Arts-based research connecting the art and science in nursing

Ruth Sanders

At the end of May, I had the privilege and delight to attend the Nursing for Creative Health Summit which also hosted the ‘Being Seen. Being Heard. Being’ Exhibition. As a member of the Special Interest Group Nurses and Creative Health supported by the National Centre for Creative Health (NCCH), this was an amazing event and wonderful to be surrounded by other researchers using arts-based research methods and connecting the art and science in nursing 🎨 🎭 🔬

The summit was unlike any other research event I have attended because of the emphasis on creative activity. Hosted at the Clore learning centre at Kensington Palace, surrounded by the park and bustling activities of families and tourists, a group of nurses (and a midwife!) had gathered from all over the country to come to discuss how they were working with creative health as part of their roles. Nurses were from many fields, both from clinical practice were present, as well as public health specialists, educators, and nursing leaders.

We had introductions from the fantastic Clare Cable Chief Executive of the Burdett Trust for Nursing outlining the importance of context and setting, encouraging us to ‘see things differently’ with the ‘tyranny of the urgent’ causing a loss of ability to see things from the unique vantage point that those in caring professions can. We talked a lot about the ‘hidden aspects’ of nursing, about the importance of relational care and the work that happens in between the tasks which often take up clinical time. Dr Justin Varney-Bennett gave a keynote about the urgency of change in a public health context, laying out plans for NHS transformation from treatment to prevention, from hospital to community, and analogue to digital.

The focus of the day was to consider key themes of Being Seen, Being Heard, and Being (connected).

Being Seen through discussion and creative activities we were encouraged to see ourselves as confident, capable and creative professionals with increasing visibility of creative health in our fields.

Being Heard focused on getting the message of creative health more widely accessible, including the publication of doctoral work and improving access to supportive journals who are interested in creative health perspectives, as well as discussing peer review opportunities.

Being focused on strategy and leadership via education, research and partnership working, acknowledging that there is strength in coming together as a collective. This highlighted the importance of embedding creative health in curriculum planning and translating this practice into real world contexts locally and nationally.

The exhibition included collage work, and an invitation to share research stories in a publication.

There was a ‘linen cupboard’ to go and be in and read a restorative poem to oneself before heading back out into the group. There was an embroidery project we could all partake and add a stitch to, there were posters presenting work and time to move around the space responding to the work.

There were materials to engaged with as we wished through the day, reminding me of the creative reflection workshops I facilitate for our students, and feeling as though a I gained additional insight into what it felt like to do something unknown in a group of people I did not know well – how vulnerable this can make one feel but also how interesting and exciting the outcome often is!

We had a world café focused on practical next steps as a SIG thinking about the development of a creative health toolkit, launching workshops and expanding networks and partnerships as well as further collaboration and support for future research projects. As a passionate advocate of creativity in health, I was so pleased to be able to explore our collective ambition to highlight what can be achieved when creativity and health join forces. This was a truly unique opportunity to share current research and future aspirations with colleagues working in this field and I loved engaging with creative activities and our world cafe discussion and arts-based activities considering our work and our roles.
This was a totally brilliant way of ‘filling my cup’ before embarking upon the final study leave for my professional doctorate at the University of East Anglia exploring all of the above in my role as a midwifery educator and researcher!

Read more about the Nursing Special Interest Group for Creative Health Summit here and the policy brief on UK Arts and Health here