CHIMe May – Practitioner Wellbeing Event

Image credit – Claire Atherton

Our May CHIMe, held on May 20th, during Creativity & Wellbeing Week, focused entirely on practitioner wellbeing. During the session, which was held at PrimeYarc in Great Yarmouth, participants were able to undertake two different Continuing Professional Development (CPD) sessions to engage and learn more about how to support their own wellbeing.

CPD Session .1.

The first session was facilitated by Creative Health & Equity Lead for Norfolk & Suffolk, Claire Atherton and saw participants create a personal Burnout Prevention Manual.

What is Burnout?

Occupational Burnout is defined in the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) Vol 11 as: ‘A syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed, characterized by three key symptoms:

• Exhaustion (emotional, mental and physical)
• Cynicism or detachment from work
• Reduced professional efficacy or performance (WHO 2019).

How did we get here?

Belfiore (2022) argues the creative health workforce is being exploited, due to the funding infrastructure that is “very comfortable using the rhetoric of collaborative, participatory, and socially engaged arts practice and of social justice and empowerment but does not follow those principles in its own modus operandi” and as a result “attending to the aftercare process for both artists and community particpants is rarely possible within the scope of projects as delineated by grant timescales and expectations“.

Session .2.

The second session was facilitated by Lotte Lewis from Red Herring Press and saw participants being led through a series of creative writing prompts to aid reflective practice.

The Scandinavian Journal of Caring Sciences published a study in March 2021 that concluded that creative writing can support ‘human becoming and mental health’ and that ‘caring professionals can create possibilities for human becoming in creating writing by enabling environments or spaces where writing is free from demands’.

To end our wellbeing session we enjoyed a delicious lunch, prepared by Gabby from Bakehouse, Great Yarmouth.

After the session participants said:

“Looking after yourself is part of your practice/work”.

“A reminder of the need for self care & how important it is to do things for myself”.

“The need to build rest & well-being into every week, even busy ones! Thank you“.

Our May CHIMe was supported by Norfolk County Council Arts Project Fund.

You can read more about CHIMe here

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