Creative Practice as Mutual Recovery - Birth Shock!

This application for Follow-on Funding for Impact and Engagement relates to an Arts and Humanities Research Council project called The Birth Project, part of the Creative Practice as Mutual Recovery consortium (grant ref. AH/K003364/1). The Birth Project has been particularly interested to explore women's subjective experience of birth and the transition to motherhood using the arts, within a participatory arts framework (Hogan 2017).

The project has also explored how artistic practices, conducted in social settings, may promote mental health recovery, and guard against compassion fatigue for birthing professionals. As an outcome of the Birth Project, the multiple discourses and perspectives surrounding birth were revealed and captured in a series of short and engaging films. The aim of this follow on project is to use the original films as part of an educational resource to be developed and used in the formal training of health and medical professionals in order to enhance training, especially with respect to encouraging reflective and empathetic thinking on the part of trainees.

Additionally, the proposal is to target new non-academic audiences by showing the films at film festivals to their attendees. Further, the project will promote the films internationally via appropriate digital platforms.

This project aims to enhance the impact of the Birth Project and to increase its capacity for engagement. There is a clear need to extend the original remit of the project because during its implementation considerations for new audiences emerged. The original intention was to explore how creative approaches could help articulate the experience and trauma of childbirth and how art can mediate the recovery of the persons involved in it and explore mutuality in recovery processes.

Engagement with the resulting visual outputs from our project challenged assumptions that medical and health professionals held about childbirth and its impact. Evidence then showed that this change in perception led to a resolution on their part to change the ways they practice in order to prevent or mitigate emotional and other trauma.

Specifically, piloted thematic analysis of self-report data showed that the professionals who were exposed to mothers' perspectives from the film showed an increased understanding of the complexity of pre and postnatal care including increased appreciation of the patient's point of view. Medical students pointed out that hearing women's stories made the experience of childbirth 'seem very real and not at all as clinical and mechanical as we are taught'.

Other comments reflected an understanding of the 'lasting effect' that childbirth can have on women's lives and a newfound 'empathy' and appreciation of the 'thoughts and emotions' of labouring women. Significantly, there was an increased capacity to go beyond patient relatedness and become aware of patient personhood.

The majority of the project data pointed to a need for increased audience engagement with the project films. Indeed, the health professionals who were involved in the study often identify themselves the need for the mothers' perspective to inform practice. They often recommend in their comments that the film becomes part of their training to inform practice (and the films have been adopted by King's College where they were piloted).

Responding to this need we seek the council's support to employ a researcher who will be solely dedicated to this follow-up project. This person will be responsible for making contact with relevant health and medical schools across the UK, arranging and setting up film viewings and discussion and analysis sessions. She or he will also enter the film into relevant festivals and be available for public discussion along with the principal investigator.

The researcher will synthesise the results of the proposed impact analysis and write a summary of the collated results. We anticipate that the position will last a year