Background

This article discusses the evaluation of a dance programme in the United Kingdom. There is little research specifically on dance within hospital-based environments. The aim was to ascertain whether dance is a useful intervention for service users in such an environment; to identify its effects on participants' inner-world experience; and to understand whether it has a positive contribution to hopefulness, as identified by Spandler et al (2007) in a national study of the effect on mental health of engaging with the arts. Dance was viewed as a complex intervention (Creek and Lawson-Porter 2007), demanding a mixed-method approach (Flick 2002) that illuminated psychosocial, rather than clinical, benefits. The programme involved collaboration between a professional female dancer employed by a local dance institute, who conducted the sessions on a voluntary basis, and hospital-based staff who were keen to extend cultural activities. The dancer had a particular interest in the potential of dance in mental health contexts and, although no formal agreement with the dance institute was involved, the project, if evaluated as having positive effects on participants, had implications for future partnerships between the hospital and local cultural institutions. The hospital was interested in demonstrating its commitment to cultural provision and had commissioned a local film company to document the programme before the research team began the evaluation. Subject to participant consent, unedited film footage was made available to the research team as data. This rather unusual set of circumstances enabled detailed observation of microprocesses of engagement by a research panel. The evaluation drew on four methods of data collection.

This article theorises museum engagement from a psychosocial perspective. With the aid of selected concepts from object relations theory, it explains how the museum visitor can establish a personal relation to museum objects, making use of them as an 'aesthetic third' to symbolise experience. Since such objects are at the same time cultural resources, interacting with them helps the individual to feel part of a shared culture. The article elaborates an example drawn from a research project that aimed to make museum collections available to people with physical and mental health problems. It draws on the work of the British psychoanalysts Donald Winnicott and Wilfred Bion to explain the salience of the concepts of object use, potential space, containment and reverie within a museum context. It also refers to the work of the contemporary psychoanalyst Christopher Bollas on how objects can become evocative for individuals both by virtue of their intrinsic qualities and by the way they are used to express personal idiom.

Thinking from experience in psychosocial practice: reclaiming and teaching 'use of self'. AbstractA course based on psychosocial theory and students' experiences in practice has been taught in the UK, Norway and Quebec. It departs from the classical social work concept 'use of self' and aims to help novices in health and social work to understand how the social world is internalised and re-produced and the value of thinking from experience. International developments such as, competency-based education, New Public Management and evidence-based practice reduce opportunities for experiential learning. This trend has been exacerbated by a focus on anti-oppressive practice without a corresponding understanding of how oppressive relations are internalized and enacted by defended and conflicted subjects. Attempts to rectify a relational deficit through traditions of reflective practice and critical reflection are important developments, but could be further strengthened by psychosocial and psychodynamic perspectives. The course combines critical, contextual and relational thinking for students in caring professions.

Biographical methods are commonly regarded as suitable for the narrative study of individual lives. This article, drawing on a psychosocial case study of narratives in a community development setting, demonstrates their potential to make links between interpersonal, organizational and policy domains. The analysis questions the adequacy of notions of ‘social enterprise’ and ‘active citizenship’ to characterize activism, leadership and engagement in disadvantaged communities. By focusing on the intersection of personal and organizational narratives and the dynamic reflexivity of the interpretive process, the article also points to the capacity of biographical methods to enhance professional skills and understanding, and bring a newly dynamic relationship between research, policy and practice.