It was a pleasure to take part today in the Power of Collaborative Action IV, the annual showcase event from the National Centre for Academic and Cultural Exchange (NCACE). The event brought together ‘audacious individuals and partnerships that are moving research, practice, and policy forward in new and impactful ways’.
I was originally inspired to take part in the event to celebrate the work of Jo Ward, the ultimate change-maker currently moving the dial on women’s health inequalities in Cheshire and Merseyside through her work with the NHS Improving Me Women’s Health and Maternity Partnership.
Often the difficulty or challenge in making meaningful partnerships with arts and cultural professionals for academics is in the navigation of the unknown or the ‘space between’. Where do our shared interests and concerns connect and how do we work together to make a difference? As a researcher interested in creative health and the social value of cultural participation, this creates a third dimension to collaborative work involving universities, cultural organisations and health and social care services.
Along with various academic colleagues across the North West, I have been lucky to know and work with Jo on multiple projects. Working as a consultant with experience of all three sectors, Jo makes introductions, initiates conversations, designs projects, steers agendas, shifts organisational cultures and makes change happen.
Along with Jo and Karen Irwin, Strategic Director at Live Music Now, I shared learning from our work together on the Lullaby project and its value in women’s perinatal health care, as part of a panel discussion. I have had the privilege to work on the Lullaby project in Cheshire and Merseyside since early 2021, ahead of the launch of a pilot programme in September that year, following Jo’s initial invitation to join the collaboration as an evaluation research advisor.
Following an introduction to Lullaby from Karen, I reflected on how being engaged in the planning and delivery of the project so early in the process has been fundamental to the value of the partnership, as from a research design perspective, this has enabled:
- due acknowledgement of the project’s international provenance, having been pioneered by Carnegie Hall in New York, and existing evidence-base;
- space for consultation with a wider, local community of practice to develop a research framework that meets the expectations of different professional sectors with an interest in the project and its potential impact;
- space and time for me to personally be a recognisable, familiar part of the team, especially for professional musicians and participating women;
- and to subsequently be able to use my intuition and be more responsive in terms of what works and is appropriate when using a formative evaluation approach in such a nuanced and deeply interpersonal creative process.
As a result of this considered and embedded approach to evaluation, we can now confidently – as a team – communicate the value of the project to women in terms of an agreed set of principles and outcomes. These include for example meaningful, qualitative examples of the impact of Lullaby on participating women’s subjective wellbeing, parental and self-efficacy:
- Participants universally described feeling more positive about themselves, finding a ‘sense of peace’ and being re-engaged with previous creative interests (e.g. singing in a choir) or discovering creative talents for the first time (e.g. writing poetry). As well as pursuing other creative interests, some participants have engaged in ongoing support for their mental health and wellbeing, including talking therapies, which they directly attribute to the confidence and motivation gained through the project.
- The creative process has helped women to establish new – and improve existing – relationships, including for example improved communication and connectivity with partners and other family members after taking part in Lullaby. In this context, the equitable creative relationships with professional musicians have encouraged and inspired more confident communication and expression of feelings with those closest to them.
- Having Lullaby recordings as a keepsake has been particularly impactful and has significant meaning attached to it, with participants describing how babies come to recognise and respond to the tune, supporting parent child bonding.
- Participating women felt immense pride in having worked collaboratively to such a high standard with professional musicians. Additionally, the professional recording process and public performance phases of the project gave real momentum to feelings of pride and accomplishment, especially for those performing to an audience for the first time.
Linking back to the themes of the event and our discussions today, this partnership has been a re-education for me on the practice and relevance of evaluation research itself within academia, where it is still treated with mistrust and scepticism by some.
Those of us who evaluate arts and creative projects for example are used to having to acknowledge or defend ourselves against the ‘fine line’ between credible (or more conventional) research outputs and those that are perceived (by others) as overly positive advocacy documents or marketing materials for our arts and cultural partners.
I’m at the point now however of leaning into this positivity much more, especially when we can be confident that our findings are credibly based on data collected via a transparent and rigorous research process. This is especially true when working in the context of women’s health inequalities – which Jo subsequently spoke to in her presentation – and where evaluation research is not simply advocating for creative approaches in health care but can be part of a genuine activist movement, supporting and empowering women to create change for themselves.
To me, this should be the fundamental role of the civic university and I’m grateful to be able to illustrate that through this exceptional creative partnership. Thanks to NCACE for the inspiration!