Re-Emerge: Arts and Health
Dr Jessica Bradley’s research takes place in creative contexts, including working closely with creative practitioners. Her recent work focuses on identity and belonging in participatory and community arts through a number of different funded projects: ‘Re-Emerge’ (The Art House, Wakefield, 2022-23), ‘Maternal Journal Podcast Series’ (Maternal Journal, 2023-24) and ‘Supporting adoptive parents through multi-arts creative practice’ (with Seaglass Collective and The Art House, Wakefield, 2023).
Re-Emerge
The Re-Emerge Arts and Health programme's initial aims were to support people after the pandemic, in particular people whose mental health may have particularly suffered during periods of lockdown or who had experienced particular isolation. The programme includes multiple arts activities led by arts professionals in printmaking, ceramics, photography and journaling, as well as health practitioners. The activities are designed to enable people to gently re-engage with others while learning a new skill and creating.
A central strand of the Re-Emerge programme is Maternal Journal. Maternal Journal is an award-winning global community movement that uses creative journaling to boost wellbeing in pregnancy, birth and parenthood. A team of perinatal mental health experts, midwives and community workers have been leading Maternal Journal workshops at The Art House and other locations across Wakefield for mothers in the area.
Alongside the programme team, Dr Jessica Bradley has been working to explore the effect of these different creative activities, drawing on collaborative ethnographic research and creative methods, as well as more traditional questionnaires and interviews. The programme has grown to include two social research interns who collaborated with the team and project participants to curate an exhibition in 2022. We worked with artist-researcher Dr Louise Atkinson to co-create a project zine. The team held a successful event as part of the ESRC Festival of Social Sciences in November 2022. Jessica and the programme team have presented the programme and research to different audiences, including a workshop for the Museum Education Group in July 2023.
Maternal Journal podcast programme
In Autumn 2023, Jessica is working with Maternal Journal producer, Laura Godfrey-Isaacs, on an Arts Council-funded podcast project. This programme includes 10 podcast episodes with 10 exceptional writers who have all created new materials for Maternal Journal, based on their own creative practice and parenting journeys. Jessica is running a series of online workshops led by the Re-Emerge team of practitioners and researching the practitioner experiences of delivering online creative workshops. Find out more about the podcasts and workshops here.
Supporting adoptive parents through multi-arts creative practice
Jessica's Research England Participatory Research project, ‘Supporting adoptive parents through multi-arts creative practice’, a collaboration with Kelly Amoss at Seaglass Collective and Diane Saxon, arts and health programme manager at The Art House. Through this project, Jessica, Kelly and Diane explored questions relating to the opportunities of the arts for wellbeing support and community-building among the adoption community. The project design was participatory, with parents and artists as co-researchers. The team presented their work at the Group for Education in Museums annual conference in September 2023 and at the Participatory Research Showcase (see video here).
Funding details
The Re-Emerge project is funded by Leeds Hospital Charities/NHS Charities Together. Associated projects have received funding from Arts Council England and Research England. Public engagement activities have been funded by the ESRC Festival of Social Science (2022, 2023) and linked activities have been funded through the Faculty of Social Sciences Social Research internship programme and the School of Education’s Research Development Fund.