Creative Workshops

Award winning Artist, Art Therapist and Animator, Tony Gammidge (www.tonygammidge.com), will screen a selection of extraordinary animated films co-created in prisons, secure units and with asylum seekers from Calais and Freedom from Torture.    

These films will be used as a starting point for an in conversation with Consultant Psychiatrist and Professor of Offender Healthcare, Annie Bartlett (St George’s – give link to Annie’s profile) opening up to a wider discussion with workshop participants.  The evening will explore the importance of working with narrative with people who are often disempowered and traumatised and how working in this way can give participants a sense of agency and responsibility for their own stories.  It will highlight how the animation process can be a safe and powerful medium through which to tell trauma narratives and through conversation between two experts approaching the topic from different perspectives, raise urgent questions around whose stories are heard, what is the line between fiction and non-fiction, through whose language are such stories told and what is the value of story to healing?

Watch the full video here

We are pleased to offer a practical and informative workshop exploring how and why it’s worth building a writing practice – even though your life is already packed. Alison will cover both the benefits and the practical stages involved, and the workshop will be peppered with opportunities for practical involvement – with plenty of opportunities for questions.  

In the long run, writing and reflecting builds empathy, objectivity, and can provide a means of further income in the future (as Dr Adam Kay knows well).   

The session will draw on a range of sources for inspiration, including ‘Airhead’ by Emily Maitlis — the book chosen for this year’s Big Read at St George’s. The session is also part of the Big Read’s schedule of activities. Alison is the author of ‘Is there a book in you?’ and ‘Marketing your book, an author’s guide’ – both published by Bloomsbury – and jointly established Kingston’s MA Publishing at Kingston (now the top such course in London).  

Prof Alison Baverstock, Kingston University 

The workshop will provide a structure enabling you to develop both your observational drawing skills and creative imagination by experinenting with each of these three perspectival methods in turn: point linear perspective, isometric drawing and aerial perspective.

Date TBC.

Facilitated by Onya McCausland, visual artist and research fellow, Slade School of Fine Art, UCL.

Movement workshops are taught by Anusha Subramanyam, a choreographer, movement therapist, and Asian dancer from the Beeja dance company. These workshops encourage participants to find and explore their own possibilities of movement by building awareness of sensations within the body and exploring improvised movement and the use of breath. Accompanied by live music, vocal, and percussion. 

Anusha returns to St George’s in 2020 with a series of inspiring and exhilarating workshops. The workshops will encourage participants to find and explore their own possibilities of movement by building awareness of sensations within the body and exploring improvised movement and the use of breath.  Elements of Indian dance, yoga, and somatic practice will be incorporated into the session, highlighting the value of movement to health promotion and well-being. 

Sessions will be delivered remotely for the time being. No previous experience of movement necessary and the workshop is suitable for all abilities. Previous attendees described the sessions as: ‘inspiring’, amazing’, ‘exhilarating’. 

Join upcoming workshops here.

Creative approaches to body, breath and voice for healthcare professionals.

Singing for Lung Health 

An introductory workshop facilitated by Phoene Cave (www.themusicalbreath.com)

• Background and context for the work within the arts and health field

• An overview of the impact of chronic lung conditions & dysfunctional breathing

patterns (and the difference between the two)

• Brief precis of current & future research

• Singing for Lung Health objectives with overview of delivery, content and best

practice

• A demonstration of the practical application utilising music, movement, mindfulness

and singing to support breathlessness

Phoene Cave is an HCPC registered music therapist and clinical supervisor. She is a singer, vocal coach and a qualified shiatsu practitioner. She has worked in music with communities in nurseries, schools, hospitals, prisons and refugee hostels as well as lecturing across education, community music and music therapy settings.

She set up Singing for Breathing at six major London hospitals and was the first singing leader in 2008 at the Royal Brompton Hospital. In 2015, she was invited to write and deliver a Singing for Lung Health training programme for the British Lung Foundation and has trained 200 new singing leaders, 80 of them funded by the BLF. She was later Head of Music Services London at Nordoff Robbins before spending 2 years in clinical music therapy practice working at HMP Bronzefield with the prison’s most challenged and challenging women, as well as in the mother and baby unit. In 2018 she moved to the south coast of England working with children and young people with social, emotional and mental health needs.

Phoene is director of www.themusicalbreath.com where she continues to be involved in research and to deliver training courses.

Following the success of her over-subscribed workshops last year, international photographer Joy Gregory returns with two new exciting workshops; one for black history month stimulated by her recent work on Matron Bell and other nurses who have contributed to the NHS and one on cameraless photography inspired by her new project exploring the healing properties of Jamaican plants. Part of Black History Month.

• 12 October 2020, 5-7pm — Workshop One. 
• 9 March 2021, 5-7pm — Workshop Two. 

The second workshop will be a space for small discussion groups to explore, reflect and share knowledge/stories on the use of plants as medicine in different cultures. There will also be an opportunity to reflect on the use of plants in present day pharmaceuticals and clinical practice.

Inspired by the work of Anna Atkins participants will make their own cyanotype prints in response to the discussions on medicinal plants. There will be a demonstration on how to make cyanotype prints from scratch during the workshop. All materials will be provided to enable you to make your own at home. There will be a follow-up workshop later, to share work, experiences and seek further advice.

Register for the workshops here.

Joy Gregory is an artist working with photography and lens based media. Her work often explores the politics of identity from gender and race. She is currently working on a commission for the Black Cultural Archives reflecting on images of black leadership, and is creating five portraits of prominent black women whose life stories are about breaking barriers.

During the lockdown her work was featured as Artist of the Week for Artist Residency Centre in Botswana, alongside Vanessa Jackson and Diana Hyslop. She was also one of the Arts Foundation Fellows who did an instagram takeover featuring the Black Cultural Archives commission, ‘Breaking Barriers’, and coinciding with conversations relating to Black Lives Matter. Her long-term project exploring language and identity engages with the last speakers of the endangered language Nluu.

She is an associate lecturer in Fine Art Photography at Camberwell School of Art. Her work is in many major collections and she exhibits across the world including at the Venice and Australian Biennales. 

Using creative design methods: Making futures together for healthcare

Tuesday, 13 April, 5.30 - 7.00pm

This session is led by Professor Mike Waller, Head of Design at Goldsmiths, who has been working on building innovation skills in a number of sectors including healthcare, governments, businesses and charities. This workshop will introduce a creative design method to help us think together creatively and apply our own imagination to build scenarios for a range of possible futures.

It is important that we all have a voice and contribute to the futures we would like to be part of. This session is interactive and will apply creative design methods to your own areas of expertise in healthcare. The activity will involve a short talk about encouraging your own creativity and curiosity; the building of shared timelines of social, technological, and political change; the development of future scenarios; and the sharing of our imaginative ideas through the development of tangible stories with simple sketch design props.

You will need to bring a few bits of material to the online session. This could include a few of the following; some paper, a few pens, some tape, old cardboard packaging or boxes, silver foil or anything else to hand. Don’t worry if you don’t have materials - we can improvise. You do not need any design skills or previous experience of design or making, just a willingness to have a go and share ideas.  All students and staff welcome.

Sound and silence: ways of listening

Facilitated by Dr Tansy Spinks

‘Walk so silently that the bottoms of your feet become ears’

 (Pauline Oliveros, Sonic Meditations)

The practice of healthcare requires ‘deep’ listening and yet how much attention do we pay to sound in comparison to sight?  Sound artist, lecturer and musician, Dr Tansy Spinks (Middlesex University), will facilitate two workshops introducing Michael Chion’s three modes of listening. In between sessions participants will be given a score or ‘sound walk’ to follow in their local environment and some short readings reflecting on ways in which we receive, analyse and filter sound. These workshops are introductory and participatory.  All staff and students welcome.

Participants are encouraged to attend both sessions:

Workshop 1 — Monday, 16 November, 4.30–5.30pm

Workshop 2 — Monday, 30 November, 4.30–5.30pm

Register for the workshops here.