By Arts Coordinator, Mir Jansen, Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.
Can you tell us about the programme?
The In & Out of Hospital arts programme at Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust was a 6-year long programme for patients and staff. From the outset we wanted to see if creative processes used by different professional artists could complement the care and treatment provided by our NHS Trust. We also wanted to give back to our staff to support their health and wellbeing, especially during the first two years of the covid-19 pandemic.
Our legacy booklet can be downloaded from our website https://arts.sth.nhs.uk/special-projects.html
What events inspired its creation?
In the creative sector, many artists and arts organisations work with people to support them with a myriad of health inequality issues. Yet in the health sector, creative interventions are not seen as an essential part of healthcare prescribing. With this programme I tried to connect the arts with the health better, working in partnership with Sheffield Museums, Yorkshire Artspace Society and The University of Sheffield’s Department for Music, as well as expert clinicians at our NHS Trust. I also wanted to evidence the outcomes of our work in way that would be better understood by a health sector. This work is ongoing with a PhD programme now linked to projects started by us.
Are you able to speak of the impact, not only on the participants but also within the local community?
Some of the projects had a greater impact on a specific patient group than others. Where we had time and commitment from expert clinicians who see Arts in Health as valuable, we had opportunities to learn, train and plan. We were seen as part of their team for the duration of the project and the outcomes were then also shared with that team.
An example, when we decided we wanted to work with composers to support a group of people who were all living with mild to severe forms of hearing impairment, the artists and I, as arts coordinator in our Arts in Health team, were given deaf awareness training as part of our planning the sessions. This helped us to have BSL interpreters when needed, but also helped the musicians we worked with to adopt creative methodologies to make the sessions accessible to all participants - such as using drawings, paintings and poems to begin the sound making process.
This was one of my favourite projects in the programme because it resulted in a live music concert where the participants played 4 of their own music compositions and invited their audience to play alongside them. We also invited the participants to visit the hearing department at the hospital to tell our members of staff how they experienced being part of such a project. It felt like an equitable exchange of learning and knowledge sharing.
Has the programme created any insights into future developments of the work?
Yes. In Arts in Health we need to present evidence of outcomes in a way that is understood and accepted by the health sector. We are continuing to work with The University of Sheffield’s Department for Music where there is a great interest in the wellbeing aspect of singing and music making. They have provided funding from the Knowledge Exchange programme to attach a PhD student to the Relax, Breathe and Sing project that started with a group of patients with long covid, expanded to include people who live with more complex respiratory and chronic fatigue health issues. We are now at a stage where we are gathering more in-depth data on how the participants benefited. This summer we will have a first report that we will be able to share with clinical experts in our NHS Trust, hopefully this will lead to a possible referral route into Singing for Health sessions for some of the patients that they see in their clinics for assessments and treatment.
Sound files can be found here Stream T.H. Sherman music
Apart from Lament for Lost Sounds (composed by Thomas H Sherman and performed by Thomas H Sherman (saxophone) and Joe Harrison-Greaves (electric guitar) the compositions Night Journey, Iron Lace, I’m your man and Thump the Clouds were composed and performed by the participants.
Full image credit: Music composing sessions delivered by musicians/composers Thomas Sherman and Joe Harrison-Greaves for people with hearing impairments in partnership with Arts in Health and the Hearing Department at Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, and University of Sheffield Department for Music. This project was part of the In & Out of Hospital arts programme, funded by Sheffield Hospitals Charity and Arts Council England.