The River Within Us

The River Within Us Nicola White

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Introduction For many of the people we work with times are hard – their sense of continued belonging to a wider supportive community is challenged. Groups and activities diminish as cuts to public funding make their mark.

Across everything we do and everything we plan to do, participation is key. It is invaluable. Through participation, we understand what is important to people and gain insight into how wider government policy impacts on their every day.

Sadly, we understand what austerity really means to people who are dependent on support. We are witnessing a negative shift in how disabled people are portrayed, encouraged and included within our communities. Cuts to public services greatly reduce the opportunity for disabled people to play a positive role within their communities.

In response we see it as imperative that the arts continue to instill a sense of purpose and agency within increasingly disenfranchised communities. The long term value of developmental arts practices is immeasurable and its continued erosion is devastating.

To gain a deeper understanding of the effect of participation we commissioned writer Nicola White to participate in workshops at the Royal Edinburgh Hospital. We asked her to look at the impact and value of involvement in the arts from the patient’s perspective.

What she found was enlightening.

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The River Within Us Tuesday afternoon in the Glasshouses. A dozen of us gather around the big tables and bend to our work. There’s some chat, cups of hot tea are fetched from the kitchen, but mostly there’s a kind of absorbed murmur, clinks of brushes on the rims of jars.

Drawings, paintings and collages are in progress. A few people are working on long-term projects, taking up where they left off the week before. Others of us are making Scottish-themed work that will provide a visual backdrop for a forthcoming Burns Supper in the space.

Debbie, meanwhile, has chosen to make a pencil portrait of David Bowie. He died earlier in the week, and she scrolls through some photographs of him on her phone for inspiration. ‘It’s important to me,’ she says.

We work shoulder to shoulder, engaged with what we are making. It is a relaxing way to be with other people – little conversations spring up from our shared enterprise. At the other table, someone compliments Peter’s pencil drawing of Rabbie Burns, the way the background clouds flow in currents around his head. Peter suddenly declaims ‘The river is within us, the sea is all about us!’ The words seem familiar to me, poetic, but also important in a way I don’t understand yet. Later, I google the line and find it is indeed part of a poem, from TS Eliot’s ‘Four Quartets’, a section which also includes the phrase, ‘The sea has many voices’. *** 5

In his seminal work Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience1, Mihaly Csíkszentmihályi argues that people are happiest when they are in a state of flow – completely absorbed or fully immersed in the activity that they are doing to the extent that other concerns are forgotten. He describes it as ‘an almost automatic, effortless, yet highly focused state of consciousness’ that we experience when caught up in a ‘meaningful challenge’.

Creative activity provides exactly this kind of opportunity for absorption. The task anchors us to the here and now, the progress of the task moves us forward in time; there is a sense of something developing.

Our desire for a task we can get lost in must account for last year’s publishing phenomenon – the huge sales of colouring books aimed at adults. It shows that what many people desire is to unplug from the chatter of the world and sit down with crayons or pens to quietly fill in little spaces with colour. The success of these books was linked to an upsurge of interest in the concept of ‘mindfulness’– an antidote to the idea that, our heads filled with past regrets and future dreads, not to mention the distractions of online living, we have forgotten how to be in the here and now.

The work that goes on in the Glasshouses contains an element of that pleasure of making, its steadying quality, but goes so far beyond that, into the making of original work. One of the longterm participants, Heather, a painter of jewel-like watercolours, says the pleasure of her painting practice lies in the fact that ‘You create something out of nothing.’ An idea that starts inside us is made manifest through our body’s actions and the manipulation of materials. ‘It lets you do what you want to do,’ she adds.

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*** The Glasshouses complex at Royal Edinburgh Hospital stands on its own, a kind of rough oasis; a long bright studio with tables and chairs and two plant-filled greenhouses extending off it.

There’s also a big open-to-everyone kitchen with a central table that can seat a dozen people. Passing through the spaces, your eyes are drawn everywhere – to all the images and objects already made or waiting to be taken up and used – books to read, countless pictures, small sculptures, bunting, signs, stacked plastic boxes full of yarn, of paint, of shiny paper, of pens, of clay, of cardboard. A hotchpotch of things that dissolve any tight formality. It feels like a space with a past and a future.

People mill about – volunteers, staff, workshop participants.

They come and go in the kind of atmosphere that is welcoming without being forcefully so. There’s an ease to the place that is rare and difficult to come by – an ease that is dependent on goodwill, knowledge and experience built up over years of work. Hard to reproduce, all too easy to eradicate. *** Many of the workshop participants have been making artwork for years. They know what they want to achieve. The lead artist, Anne Elliot, is there to assist them in that goal, to offer her skills as a professional artist, to suggest solutions and strategies. To open up new directions.

For less confident participants there are prompts that link them to larger projects, like the images for the Burns Supper.

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Throughout the year, the Glasshouses project arranges events linked to the year’s round: end of year parties, summer fetes. Each event is both a vehicle for creative work and an experience of community.

The work is taken seriously, at whatever level of expertise. The makers in the Glasshouse workshops show a marked respect for their neighbour’s work. No-one is patronised. The work flows out of the individual imagination to join the visible world.

‘It opens people up,’ says Susan, a regular volunteer at the Tuesday sessions. No longer a patient at the Royal Edinburgh Hospital, Susan comes back to the Glasshouses every week for the community it provides and the opportunity to volunteer and contribute. *** In Ward 14, Ian is unsure about making a collage. He orders the bits of paper in front of him, aligning them with the table, anxiously tidying them into bundles. Anne explains what the aim is, but Ian shakes his head, says he doesn’t know anything about that. She offers him a choice of background – this one or this one? Ian is suddenly more confident, pointing quickly to the one on the right. The task proceeds in simple steps over the next forty minutes. Ian, distracted sometimes, has no hesitancy about where things should go in that moment, what the right choices are in terms of colour and composition. He decides when it is complete.

Anne holds the abstract arrangement up to him. ‘Yeah,’ he says ‘this looks good.’ His gaze is steady for all the time he looks at what he has created.

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Meanwhile, across the table, Bobby measures a margin, a pencil-line rectangle that will frame the picture he plans to draw.

For thirty minutes he measures the gap between edge of the paper and the line; rubs out most of what he does, starts again. Things have to be right. Just when you think he will never start, his pencil jumps to the centre of the page, and he draws at a furious pace, improvising his own version of a picture from a magazine.

He is still drawing when the session ends, but asks someone to store the drawing until he can work on it next. He doesn’t want to lose it. He is worried someone might tear it up, not realising its value. *** Ward 14 residents are older men with various forms of dementia and memory loss. Because of their cognitive difficulties, patients can find it difficult to get involved with unfamiliar processes. Vanessa, the Activities Co-ordinator in Ward 14, is a crucial bridge – she knows the patients well, she knows who is having a good or bad day, the skills in drawing or making that these men may already possess, ready to be re-engaged. Staff can make a huge difference to the success of a project.

Artist James Mclardy has completed an ambitious project with Ward 14. Realising that the men he was working with possessed dormant practical skills from previous jobs in construction, woodwork or decorating, James introduced materials associated not with fine art, but with trade skills – planks of wood, standard paint brushes, graining tools. With these, the men created a giant floor sculpture of individually decorated parts that can be put together in multiple ways, like a giant construction kit.

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The making and re-making of this assembly engaged the men in a remarkable way, and continues to do so. It is something quite different from the daily hospital round, allowing them scope to be designers, decision makers, constructors. *** The value of creative activity to patients at Royal Edinburgh Hospital is something more understood in the experience of it than in any retelling. Value is a slippery thing to gauge. And the attempts to measure value can obscure the thing being valued, often concentrating on numbers and aggregates rather than individual experience. But in a time of decreasing public resources, the need to find ways of articulating the worth of creativity is crucial, a constant challenge.

In the world of health care, solutions that are ‘evidence based’ have the greatest purchase. Things that can be measured are held up as more legitimate and trustworthy than things that are felt or intuited.

In an academic paper from 2008, ‘Evaluating the impact of participatory art projects for people with mental health needs’,2 the authors acknowledge the difficulty of collecting and analysing data in this area, yet go on to conduct what they describe as ‘the first systematic outcome study in the UK involving a substantial number of arts participants with mental health needs’. The survey does not talk about the nature of the arts activity that people participated in, though it does acknowledge that the period of six months that the survey covers is a limited span. Whatever the shortcomings of the method, it is interesting that the results of

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the study show improvements in mental health, social inclusion and empowerment (as evaluated by participants themselves) but that the greatest gain from involvement in the arts was in the sense of empowerment. *** The circled chairs in one of the glasshouses gradually fill up with people who have come to take part in the singing group. We have folders full of songs, and we take it in turns to choose the next song to sing. Some familiar tunes have new lyrics, re-written by the group to reflect their personal experiences.

Andrea has brought a suggestion of a new number for the group, called ‘Fight Song’. It is a defiant song of survival, and Andrea has devised gestures to underline its meaning. We give it a go. Once you give yourself up to the singing, once you step over the embarrassment threshold, the shared experience is hugely enlivening.

Davy has chosen a song he wants to get up and dance to.

There are hoots of encouragement. Davy moves to the centre of the circle and dances to the music with a combination of pleasure and diligence. Again, I have that feeling of being supported by the people around me. Penny is the one facilitating the group, providing the underlying thrust and rhythm of her guitar, but it is the group as a whole that allows you to contribute as you want, that encourages you beyond your inhibitions. ***

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The idea of ‘agency’ seems to me central to the work, a term that embraces personal empowerment and the opportunity to make autonomous choices that affect your life and your environment. Seen from the outside, these choices may seem small – a strip of coloured paper placed here, not there; a group of people singing the song you chose – but to someone dealing with adverse circumstances or serious illness, they can have immense power. In an interview with artists working at the Royal Edinburgh Hospital3, the writer and curator Kirsten Lloyd notes that ‘a minute can be as powerful as a two hour long session, and that patience and perseverance are essential in the search for something meaningful.’

This ‘meaningfulness’ resides not just in the process of making, and the pleasures of absorption and community that come with that process: the artworks that result from the process have meaning also, as does the experiencing of those artworks or performances by an audience.

Participants in the workshops care about the quality of what they create, and are invested in the idea of doing more, doing better. At the Tuesday workshop, when I asked Phil what was more important to him, the making or the result, he said the finished drawing (a beautiful, energetic latticework of bold black lines) was what mattered most. ‘Something to show for your effort’ added Gerry, beside him. But perhaps the question introduced a false dichotomy, as surely the quality of the experience of making is inseparable from the quality of thing that is made.

The provision of meaningful creative activity creates a powerful ‘third space’ between the institution and the private realm. People take part not as patients receiving treatment but as individuals with something to contribute. This ‘third space’ is 12

both a physical place and a conceptual one. It is physical in the sense that the Glasshouses or the temporary activity spaces in the wards provide places where new and experimental activities happen. The creative making of objects and images is radically different from the usual round of the hospital day, where patients are receivers – of care, of medication, of meals, of directions from staff. Time can hang heavily.

In his recent work on loneliness, neuroscientist John Cacioppo outlines the importance of feeling we are ‘adding to’, rather than taking from, our social connections. ‘One of the things we have learned is that avoiding loneliness is not about ‘getting’, not about being a recipient. Despite what economists say, that is not how we are designed.’4 Creativity changes the polarity of interactions, and this is where that ‘third space’ becomes both conceptual and radical; an open-ended process where ideas can be tried out, played with, discarded or embraced.

Critic Nicholas Bourriaud echoes this finding in the context of socially engaged art practices in his book Relational Aesthetics; ‘art is the place that produces a specific sociability,’ precisely because ‘it tightens the space of relations’.5 Peter, with his spontaneous Eliot quote, evokes this elusive process best. The river is within us, the sea is all about us.

Humans need to contribute their talents, their imaginations and unique points of view to something greater. To become involved in the making of art is to become involved in the making of meaning. By doing it we take our place in the ‘sea of voices’ that is our culture.

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1

Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990). Flow: The Psychology of Optimal

Experience. New York: Harper and Row. ISBN 0-06-092043-2 2

Hacking, S; Secker, J; Spandler, H; Kent, L; and Shenton, J. (2008)

Evaluating the impact of participatory art projects for people with mental health needs. Health and Social Care in the Community 3

Lloyd, K (2014) Uncommon Ground – Radical approaches to

Artistic Practice, Artlink, 2014 4

Cacioppo, J, as interviewed by Tim Adams in The Observer

28/2/16 5

Bourriaud, N (2002) Relational Aesthetics. Paris: Presses du rĂŠel,

2002. ISBN 2-84066-060-1

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“Artlink has enriched my life; it’s an enjoyable and stimulating environment. I have gained support from it in the past and it’s great to be able to give support back through volunteering.”

Karina – Volunteer, Royal Edinburgh Hospital project

“It allows me the space and time to relax and be myself, and I really enjoy that we can support each other in the group.”

Maggie – Participant and artist, Royal Edinburgh Hospital project

In the last year Artlink: Created

400 30

making sessions with learning disabled young people and their families,

establishing imaginative community links to support better transition from school to community.

Worked with

40

people with severe / profound learning disabilities exploring new ways of sustaining involvement in activities, promoting new forms of learning and stimulating more informed care networks.

Organised care staff development programmes designed to stimulate wider interests, build care staff confidence and enhance ways of caring.

Supported

10 40 25,000 seminars and

exhibitions for

audiences

in hospitals, arts spaces, universities and community venues throughout Edinburgh and the Lothians.

Provided participative activities in anything from storytelling, singing and cabaret on wards and public spaces in

4 4090

hospital sites for

participants.

Created

900 165

sessions for

people

with enduring mental health problems, establishing relevant support networks for people in hospital care or living in the community.

Undertook

1080

outings

to cultural events in Edinburgh to open up access and participation in the arts for disabled people and those who are elderly and isolated.

11 9 234

Created

artists' research events

and supported

investigative placements

with

sensory impaired individuals exploring the creative potential of access services.

Linked to

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academic institutions:

University of St Andrews, University of Edinburgh, University of Dundee and Glasgow School of Art as part of long term plans to establish research partnerships to understand the impact of our work.

Produced

4

publications exploring how the arts contributes to individual agency and improved care environments.

Worked with

5 110 40

writers

musicians

visual artists

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and mentored

volunteers early career artists

“You feel involved and valued, not a faceless demographic. I develop a sense of collective ownership of each of the projects.

The emphasis is on collaboration between the artists/staff and ourselves. Everyone's opinions matter and they are respectfully explored in a structured way.”

Ann – Participant, Investigate Create programme Edinburgh

www.investigatecreate.co.uk

“Artlink takes you out of isolation and gives you a reason to get out the house. It gives you a focus, an opportunity to learn new skills and access to culture. Artlink's different from other groups. It's unique, more open and you can bounce ideas off people. It’s good to talk to people about creative ideas and get feedback; I don't get that opportunity anywhere else.”

Louise – Participant, Curious Routes project Edinburgh

www.curiousroutes.co.uk

“Artlink are the sole non-governmental organisation who have done anything to improve the life of our son Donald. So for all the the organisations there are, (charity funded or otherwise) for the benefit of people with learning disability, Autism, Down’s Syndrome, mental health problems, etc.

Artlink is the only one who have sought out people like Donald in order to offer help of any kind! This perhaps could be surprising to many people who, when hearing of your organisation, assume it to be merely another ‘arty farty’ group, instead of the real personcentred group you are.”

David – Father of participant, Ideas Team project Midlothian www.ideasteam.org

Nicola White is a writer based in Scotland. She writes about art, care and memory alongside short and long fiction.

Her first novel, In the Rosary Garden, won the Dundee International Book Prize.

Artlink 13a Spittal Street, Edinburgh, EH3 9DY 0131 229 3555 info@artlinkedinburgh.co.uk www.artlinkedinburgh.co.uk Artlink Edinburgh & the Lothians is registered in Scotland No. 87845 with charitable status Scottish Charity No. SC006845.