COMMUNITY PARTNERSHIP PLACEMENT:
A Reflective Portfolio
In this blog post, Nnamdi reflects on their placement with B arts, which they completed as part of the Keele University medical students general practice and community placements.
Author - Nnamdi Ukaegbu - 21 July 2022
Nnamdi, during their placement with B arts, dressed as a steward to help guide audiences around Moontopia.
Image Description: A black man is stood outside in the evening wearing a high vis, alien antenna headband and a blue mesh scarf.
Who are B arts and why are they important to their service users?
B arts is a self-described ‘participatory arts organisation’ however they function more broadly within the community, tackling areas such as food insecurity, early childhood development, social inclusion, and climate justice. One of their main aims is to encourage creativity in people from backgrounds that haven’t traditionally engaged with the arts; this is especially relevant for the socioeconomics of Stoke-on-Trent - the area being predominantly working class. I had the pleasure of helping in March, for the preparation of one of their interactive plays, ‘Moontopia’, and saw the way the organisation fulfilled many roles for their multiple service users.
One of the more obvious aspects of the B-arts operation was how resourceful the organisation was. For example, they implemented numerous strategies to reduce waste and keep costs low, such as in reusing materials from previous events and collaborating with local supermarkets that normally discard items past their shelf-life. The final play, and most of their past events, was held at the ex-industrial warehouse-style building in which B-arts is based. However, they also utilise the surrounding area and offer virtual events where appropriate (eg during lockdown and COVID-19 case surges).
Moontopia was mostly attended by families and their children, some of which had developmental disabilities. I think it is crucial for children, in their developmental years, to have creative outlets and engage with the arts for their growth. Often in education, this is offered through an ableist lens and with a focus on grades and attainment, so it was refreshing to see B-arts offer their plays and workshops in small, interactive groups, without these constraints, and instead with patience. This hopefully translates to these children having more opportunities and job security later in life, irrespective of their socioeconomic class or disability. Improvements in these social determinants of health, not only benefit the individual but also the wider community.
I obviously expected the children to engage, but I was warmed to see the adults and volunteers participate in these events and experience community. On reflection, I understand this is vitally important to the health of parents/caregivers in society. There are limited options for leisure activities that are child-friendly in remote/rural areas and costs of childcare are increasingly expensive for many families. Thus, B arts provides invaluable respite care and relief for informal caregivers.
One of my favourite features of B-arts was the ‘Bread in Common’ café which utilises food waste from supermarkets to create low-cost/‘pay-as-you-feel’ meals and baked goods for the local community. Not only does this tackle food waste and food insecurity, but the café is a lovely space that passing onlookers often wandered into for socialisation or to work. Bread in Common also holds cooking classes and is sometimes run by the Regents College Learners, who are a group of young people with learning disabilities/difficulties. Running the café provides them the opportunity to develop independency in skills such as cooking, cleaning, handling money, but also developing more specific skills as servers for example.
A scene from Moontopia, which took place within B arts building, No. 72, an ex-industrial space. In this scene the room was transformed into a night club, La Lune, and audiences joined for a cocktail and sit down meal.
Image Description: A large warehouse space full of people stood up looking at something off camera. Also in the room there are tables covered in silver table cloths and chairs to sit down on. On the ceiling, there are paper lanterns illuminated with white light and stage lights adding pink and yellow lightning to the room. In the distance there is a small stage with musicians on.
Why is community important and how has this been affected in a global pandemic?
Simply, community is an aggregation of people with a level of shared identity; it can also be observed under different sociological lenses of age, race, disability, sexuality, gender, nationality, religion, and more. In capitalistic society, that rewards individualism, there is relief and fun and care in community. Community is also formed over marginalised identity, whose members often experience institutionalised oppression and structural violence. Here, these communities serve to fulfil more basic needs of safety, and protection and are key to the health of these individuals. The ongoing global pandemic has disproportionately affected many marginalised people and has continued to widen health inequalities. Community was vital for these communities to minimise the felt effects of the pandemic and allow people to hold each other and grieve. While communities can be robust and sustainable over virtual communication, there is great strength in community taking place in the same physical space.
I was lucky to work with B arts during a time when COVID-19 cases where relatively low in the UK, well into the vaccine rollout, and the organisation had resumed in-person events. I saw how invaluable B arts was to the children, families, older adults, and disabled people that experienced community there. For many individuals the pandemic has marked a period of excruciating loneliness, but for others it has confined them to be the sole carers of young children, older adults, or disabled family members. In this regard, the periodic closure of B arts must’ve had detrimental effects on health, especially to those from marginalised communities in the local area that depended on them for social interaction and/or respite care.
Working with the B arts service users allowed me to greater appreciate how the loss of community has been felt in different ways. The obvious loss of community has been in the form of loss of life, as people have lost loved ones and key members of their community to COVID-19. Due to necessary social restrictions, this has been felt twofold as a loss of community members, but also a loss of community capacity to grieve the people we’ve lost as well as former ways of living. Many have experienced permanent loss of community with the closure of organisations, such as B arts, due to economic changes and the loss of funding. Even with fewer cases, lifted restrictions, and the vaccine rollout there is still an understandable reluctance for more vulnerable individuals to feel fully reintegrated into their communities. Interacting with disabled service users has also emphasised the loss of community through the change of communication during the pandemic; people relying on lip-reading, facial expression, and other social cues that were lost during the pandemic have struggled.
I am keen to utilise my understanding of community care in my future clinical practice. It will be important for me to consider social history and social care when making clinical decisions with patients. Also, while I do not think it is beneficial to all for ‘community’ to be medicalised, I would like to familiarise myself with social prescribing which has been receiving more attention lately.
During Moontopia audiences were able to interact with installations and characters. In this photo, an audience member is interacting with an actor (on the right) who is describing the images on the ‘Monster Mural’. This mural was created by participants at Moontopia workshops with families and children in the preparations for the show.
Image Description: Two people stand looking at a cardboard wall covered in illustrations and doodles. There is a title at the top of the cardboard which reads “Monster Mural” and all of the illustrations are space themed. The doodles include - stars, aliens, planets, a rocket ship, moons.
Reflection on an encounter with service user
I was on a break and eating lunch in the Bread in Common café, together with all the other Moontopia volunteers. A man, who no one seemed to know, stepped into the café entrance from outside and started talking, to no one in particular. Those who were closest to him at the doorway were happy to converse with him and laughed as he talked. He stayed for five minutes and then was gone.
My first reflection is about accessibility and how barriers prevent many people from receiving care. B arts makes their physical space inviting to a diverse group of volunteers from various backgrounds of age, gender, and disability. The volunteers in turn, along with the range of events B arts hosts, attract many members of the community. There were many small touches I noticed that made B arts feel more welcoming and allowed the community to access its services: ramp access for wheelchair users, sanitary pads in the bathrooms, vegan and vegetarian food options, non-alcoholic beverage options for adults during evening events, and large signage outside and inside the facility. Some of these provisions are taken for granted in hospital settings, but it is still important to consider and be aware of them.
The encounter also made me reflect on the effects that the pandemic has had on mental health during the pandemic. The mass fear, grief, and loneliness brought on by the pandemic has provoked a lot of discourse about wellbeing and mental illness, especially depression and anxiety. However, in this encounter I reflected on how stigma persists around certain mental illnesses despite these discussions we’re having more often. People with more stigmatised illnesses, BPD or schizoaffective disorders for example, generally receive less sympathy, but particularly when in crisis. These individuals are more likely to be socially isolated, especially in a remote area like Stoke-on-Trent and during a global pandemic. It made we question whether community care organisations are being fully utilised in addressing the needs of these individuals and what more could be done. I also realised how dynamic B arts service users were and how excellent an open and public space like a café could serve as an introduction to an organisation.
Finally, I reflected on my own health. That encounter made me further appreciate the volunteers I had been working with and how social/lovely they had been. I found my own mental health much improved after volunteering with B arts and it was a nice distraction from my course, which is often intense. I reminded myself how important it is, and will be, to have a work-life balance where possible, and diversify my interests. Coincidentally, as we were all on a break at the time, it made me reflect on professionalism and the expected duty of care we have as healthcare professionals to our patients, even outside of our prescribed working hours.
Nnamdi Ukaegbu