Artwork
Creative enquiry is the exploration of lived experience through the arts.
Encountering and understanding ourselves better, reconnecting with our values, meaning and purpose, gaining self-acceptance, developing positive relationships and personal growth are features of human flourishing that have all been described by medical students engaging in creative enquiry. These dimensions of creative enquiry also can lead to practitioner development (developing our understanding of our healthcare practices in their intersubjectivity and complexity).
The engine of Creative Enquiry innovation in the medical curriculum is the Creative Arts for Health Student Selected Component which I set up in 2004 at the University of Bristol and continue to run at Barts and The London, QMUL.
The Near Peer Teaching SSC/Elective has created formal teaching opportunities for final year students. It is rapidly expanding and popular with both students and GP tutors. Students are allocated to GP practices for 4-6 weeks and assist the GP tutor to organise, plan and deliver teaching to more junior students as well as allied health professionals.
In 2017 we introduced creative enquiry into the Roy Alexander Briggs GP prize. Each year there are different themes.
As part of their primary care placements, students are invited to complete a reflective piece using different prompts offered across the year groups. In year 1, students consider their professional identity formation. In year 2, students reflect on a significant encounter they have had with a patient. In year 3, students may either reflect on compassion or generalism.
Barts and the London Arts is a new creative enquiry initiative which aims to bring together, explore and display creative works from both students and staff in the Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry. We run exhibitions and workshops and seek to expand student ways of knowing and reflecting across the curriculum.
An invitation to anyone to take some time for creative exploration on Fridays and tag @CreativeEnquiry, use #FlourishingFriday or submit here.
COVID-19 has been a time of great loss and challenge. For medical students, their clinical placements drew to a halt and distancing set in. In response a team of students and clinicians established a lockdown creative enquiry programme as a way of exploring and sharing lived experience. This pilot evidenced student leadership and co-productive working in order to develop innovative and complex virtual educational spaces. We built connection, relationship and solidarity across disciplines and hierarchies through the arts.
Creative-reflective texts in this section are created by patients, carers, relatives or friends, anyone touched by illness. Some texts are by those who have experienced illness or caring for illness directly and others by those nearby using their imagination in order to try to explore or portray the patient or carer lived experiences.
SAPC World Upside Down
From SAPC World Upside Down, 2021
See student presentations for SAPC South East 2024 here.
This two-day online event explores productive, radical, contemporary encounters between the arts and mental health, bringing together clinical, artistic and research perspectives.
In 2019 we introduced creative enquiry into this conference as a physical exhibition in 2019.
See here for 2020 virtual exhibition.
See here for 2021 virtual exhibition.