CR EW PRO JECT
The beauty of being an ‘outsider’ An action research evaluation of the creativity, resilience, enablement and wellbeing (CREW) programme facilitated by Outsider Gallery London Rachel Jane Liebert Lecturer, School of Psychology, University of East London With Nana Dameah Acheampong-Sah, Mike Chase Janet Chimwayange, Hannah Gabriela French, Daria Anna Janik, Nick Jobber, Laura McGrath, Carina Gomes Monteiro, Charles Chitoo Nnakwue, Tehseen Noorani, Kayleigh Rashbrook and Oriana Tekleab
CREW is a pilot art and music programme for people who have experienced distress, madness and/or mental health services in north London. It was hosted by Outsider Gallery, facilitated at Clarendon Recovery College and ran from 2016–2017.
My decolonising and feminist commitments have emerged from my collaborations with community groups in Aotearoa New Zealand, New York and London toward mad, racial, gender and educational justice. These collaborations have also led me down an at times otherworldly path of participatory, embodied and creative methods in my research and teaching, as put forth in my forthcoming book with Routledge, Psycurity: Colonialism, Paranoia and the War on Imagination.
In our evaluation of CREW we found it makes a space for participants to experience expression, imagination and collectivity, and for serviceproviders and community members to experience and appreciate community, creativity and healing. It is an empowering, de-stigmatising and transformative programme with the potential to make a remarkable therapeutic and social impact. It should be enabled to continue. ‘Everyone deals with their mental health very individually, so two people with bipolar would be two very different people... and you throw creativity into the mix with that as well and it’s very difficult to determine, “Right that’s your box, that’s your box, that’s your box and that ticks it all”.’ (Ben, CREW facilitator)
When describing the aims and process of CREW (creativity, resilience, enablement and wellbeing) in an interview facilitators Ben Wakeling and Jon Hall spoke of four core elements. These four elements – a responsive space, the expression of self,
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relationality and support and the telling of stories – enable CREW to sustain an ethical and engaged practice without imposing a standardised ‘model’ that would otherwise threaten the therapeutic and innovative essence of the programme. The evaluation that follows sought to explore how this approach affected individuals, services and the community. Three groups of adults and young people chose to participate in the programme. Each was guided through weekly, one-hour one-to-one and group sessions for 10 weeks before being invited to showcase their art and music to the community through an evening of exhibitions and performances. In our assessment we used a mixed-methods ethnographic action research evaluation to collect both quantitative and qualitative data. We simultaneously participated in the programme and reflecting on how to improve the evaluation process (Kagan et al, 2011; Cleary et al, 2016; Teo, 2010). Our final report drew on data collected from 75 post-session responses from CREW participants, 11 interviews with CREW participants
© Journal of holistic healthcare
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Volume 15 Issue 3 Autumn 2018
