Socially engaged photography and wellbeing: reflections on a case study in the northwest of England

Abstract

This paper describes a 9-month project commissioned by Halton Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) and Liverpool photography organisation, Open Eye Gallery. Socially engaged photographers worked with local residents from the Windmill Hill estate in Runcorn to describe healthy and unhealthy aspects of the area. Six women were trained to use cameras to document everyday things that mattered to them. Through focus groups they discussed what these photographs revealed about the health and ill-health of the area. The resulting exhibition, As and When, told their story. Despite being a deprived area with more than average incidence of illness, they identified many positive things that enhanced their sense of wellbeing and resilience. The benefits of the project included increased social engagement and participation, an improved sense of vitality and rejuvenation, emotional benefits, a feeling of greater political agency and increased visual literacy. This paper outlines the model of practice developed with the support of CCG and in collaboration with local stakeholders. It makes a case for the value and the ways in which clusters of general practices could develop links and work with health assets in their local communities.

Arts-based approaches to public engagement with research: Lessons from a rapid review

“…As per the intervention design and development stage, new actors such as workshop facilitators [17], educators [14] or performers [8,16,39] may need to be brought in to support intervention delivery, although the same stakeholders are often involved throughout [23,33,35,38,[53][54][55][56].…”

“…Often, the same individuals and stakeholder groups involved in the development of the arts-based public engagement approach are also involved in its delivery [11,23,26,35,38,53,55,56].…”

“…Intended lay beneficiaries can be from a particular community targeted by the intervention [9,15,16,18,20,22,23,25,26,28,31,34,38,42,43,54,55,59,61,62], including a cultural or ethnic community [9,15,16,18,20,22,25,26,28,31,34,38,42,43,54,55,59,61,62] such as African American communities [18,38], Indigenous communities [20,22,28,42,54], or individuals from a specific geographical area [35,45]. Members of the general public are also sometimes the intended beneficiaries…”

Introduction: Visual Sociology and the Relational Image

“…The street, in the city or otherwise, is discussed from the perspective of researcher as he or she feels and sees through the act of walking, identifying liminal spaces and boundaries of formality and informality, potential knots of conflict and contention. Here, relating the image to the actual urban divides and social relationships, we discuss the potential for visual methods as a tool for examining change as well as working with others to help us better ‘see’ change (Bratchford et al 2018 ). We use the visual as a way of exposing environmental and social injustice and inequalities and focus on a range of mixed methods, from photo walks and Google Street View to artistic-driven approaches, to better understanding cities and the ways in which they can be used, experienced and interrupted (Jordan and Linder 2016 ).…”

“…Focusing on the visual as a performance, as something that moves across platforms, that can be adopted and co-opted, edited or appropriated into text, slogans or even a meme, call attention to the potential role and production of the visual as a means of establishing possibilities for political responses, however flippant or short-lived, are worthy of study (Bratchford et al 2018 ). These new objects and actions are, we suggest, important to note from a social and political performance perspective, particularly when we look back at how the use and function of images has changed in recent years.…”