Looking at the role of objects and materials to explore thoughts and feelings in the professional frame
Working lives today encompass a need for constant attention to detail, plus high levels of responsibility. This can lead to a loss of the reflection and self-care spaces that help balance pressures and strains of the workplace with everyday life.
Join us for a hands-on seminar focused on combatting fatigue and stress. Facilitated by art psychotherapist and researcher Helen Jury and Art and Science MA students from Central Saint Martins, participants will enjoy two creative ‘make and take’ workshops.
Morning session:
Using art materials and objects, including some from the Association of Anaesthetists' museum collection, we will focus on contextualising fatigue and stress in the workplace.
We will look at the role of reflection in slowing the daily routine and focussing on the present, and on creativity and its established links to wellbeing benefits.
We will consider how to take time out and the dual aspect of ‘lost’ time in anaesthesia: time to ‘go under’ and time ‘to come round’.
Participants will have the opportunity to engage creatively with objects and art materials in real time in workshop activities, to investigate benefits of object handling and creative expression through art materials and how such activities allow us to think in a novel way and to process thoughts meaningfully.
Ideas around different senses of time and the benefits of being involved in hands-on activity will also be explored and how this can slow-down the pace of life around us. There will be opportunity to look at the wider frame of reflecting on time, and the dual concept of there is no time with being in a rush and how we lose connection regarding our use of time.
Afternoon session:
An image-making session led by artists on the Art and Science MA degree course at Central St Martins with experience in the clinical mental health environment. With technical assistance from the team, participants will create prints and other images using a wide range of historic anaesthetic equipment from a private collection.
Art materials and lunch will be provided.
This seminar is limited to 25 participants.