Animating Heritage and Stigma

The Animating Heritage and Stigma project will build on the successes of two Connected Communities funded programmes - Heritage and Stigma, and Untold Stories of Volunteering. The shared aims of these original and discrete projects were to allow their participants to help shape the projects they were part of and thus represent themselves in their own terms. In particular, service users and volunteers were invited to co-design the research and co-produce its output. This new project aims to take the findings from Heritage and Stigma, which reflected the 'ordinariness' of mental health and learning disability, and use the techniques crafted by the Untold Stories of Volunteering to reach new audiences. We will use the existing testimonies collected and created by Heritage and Stigma and 'animate' them by employing Cultural Animation, a methodology of stakeholder engagement and knowledge co-production developed by Untold Stories of Volunteering to explore key themes. Cultural animation allows participants to co-produce stories using plays, songs and other creative activities to give participants a 'voice'. Pioneered by the team at the New Vic Theatre and Kindle Partnerships, who are partners on this bid, it involves acknowledging and critically approaching existing power and knowledge hierarchies and taking steps to minimise them. This way of working was unforeseen in the original Heritage and Stigma project,which was limited by its terms of reference to capture service user testimonies and to present them as part of a museum project. It was also limited in terms of its geography focusing in and around the Leeds city region. Similarly, the focus of Untold Stories was not on mental health but by employing its Cultural Animation techniques the partners will work together to ensure the long-term legacy of this new project by consulting with and showcasing outputs to key stakeholders and policy makers on a national and international level. This will allow us to create new and meaningful ways of dissemination that also broaden the geographical scope. It will also develop and provide a toolkit for community groups, broadly defined, to explore their own heritage and histories. This interest from community groups was also unforeseen in the original projects and toolkits will allow us to give the original research value beyond the original group of co-producers. To achieve our goals, the project team has identified five key stakeholder groups with whom we will work. These are school groups, mental health and learning disability professionals, social policy makers, international 'gatekeepers' in the USA and Japan, and community researchers. None of these groups were foreseen in the original Heritage and Stigma bid and these stakeholders have been chosen, not only for their demand and interest in the project but also because of their ability to effect organisational change. In each case, the participants will be introduced to the issues arising from Heritage and Stigma, focusing on the pathways to acceptance and understanding of marginalised groups. Overall the project will encourage participants to challenge notions of stigma with a view to improving the understanding and acceptance of marginalised groups. The project's key outcomes will be: 1. The co-creation and dissemination of a transformative drama for use in schools during the lifetime of the project and beyond. 2. The development of cultural animation materials to be used in conjunction with the drama to inform the training of mental health professionals in an understanding of patient and service user perspectives. 3. The creation of a 'toolkit' for community researchers to explore their own histories which will be tested and shared at key points in the life time of the project. 4. The co-creation and dissemination of project outputs to policy makers at a national and international level with a view to creating inclusive dialogues about the nature and future of care.

The rationale for this project is a timely one. Cuts to mental health services generally and children's services more specifically have highlighted a need to 'kick start' a conversation with young people about key issues (1). In 2016, research showed that young people have problems with their own mental well-being (2). Central to this is a continuing need to address the issue of stigma which has been described as the 'most toxic' of issues facing those living with mental ill-health (3). Moreover, the UK funding councils have recently announced initiatives to encourage and strengthen mental health research (4). Significantly, the objectives described within this bid, will deepen the impact of the Heritage and Stigma project, which was described as 'internationally excellent' in the REF2014 as an impact case study. Moreover, by drawing on the strengths of the project partners it will enable the exchange of knowledge by engaging with audiences unforeseen initially. Rather than just presenting a history of care we will look to use our materials to influence policy and attitudes towards mental illness and learning disability. The strength of this collaboration is that it has the potential to reach, engage and educate a much larger audience by using innovative methodologies described elsewhere in the bid. Clearly, working with those of school age children allows Animating Heritage and Stigma to encourage young people to reflect on the everyday realities of mental ill-health and also to consider its impact. The New Vic Theatre has an existing schools programme in the north west of England and we will work with eight schools on this project. The materials collected by Heritage and Stigma will enable our partnership to reflect on both the ordinariness of mental health and learning disability and also their challenges. Our partnership and innovative cultural animation activities will allow the participants to consider pathways to understanding and acceptance and we will use our 'histories' to re-imagine the present. Moreover, we will use our partnership work with future caring and health professionals so that we might impact on care in the longer term. Our aim here is to help those who wish to work with vulnerable adults to understand the complexities of lived experience and arm carers with the tools to empathise fully with those under their care. Finally, we have a number of partners on board who will help us explore the longer term sustainability of the bid and enable us to engage with policy makers at a national and international level. Our partners in both the USA and in Japan have expressed a demand to see the messages and methodologies of Animating Heritage and Stigma transferred to their own countries. This will allow our work to reach those involved in care internationally, with partners offering access to their own communities of mental health professionals in each of those countries. In each of these cases, we aim to provide models of learning and understanding that can be replicated so that the reach of the project extends beyond the funding period.
1. 'Child mental health 'faces' complex and severe problems', 20 Feb 2015, available at
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-31543213 [last accessed 11 Apr 2017].
2. 'More than a third of female students have mental health problems, 11 Apr 2017. Available at
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-37037532 [last accessed 3 Nov 2016] and 'Sons fear talking to their
fathers about mental health', 28 Oct 2016, available at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-37798403 [last
accessed 3 Nov 2016.]
3. Clare Allan, 'The most toxic issue facing those with mental health problems', Guardian, 3 April 2013, available
at http://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/apr/03/mental-health-problems-stigma-employers [Last
accessed 11 Apr 2016].
4. 'UK Research Councils join forces on mental health', 17 Aug 2017, available at http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/media/news/1708171/ [last accessed 20 Oct 2017].