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How craft can empower the vulnerable


ByMah Rana

11 August 2021

The artist Mah Rana explains why creativity should be integral to social care


Mah Rana

11 August 2021

  • Craft and wellbeing
  • Crafts magazine

A still from Mah Rana’s 2016 film, One Day When We Were Young

Small acts of care can make a big impact in turbulent times. While the pandemic has separated us in ways we could never have imagined, wreaking havoc on the nation’s mental health, rupturing people’s usual support networks and exposing the challenges of helping those most in need, it has also highlighted the speed at which the creative arts can deliver support to the vulnerable.

Since COVID-19 hit, there has been an unprecedented rise in craft interventions by concerned communities in the UK. The charity Arts 4 Dementia, for example, adapted their Clay for Dementia project by sending bags of clay and cutting wires to participants’ homes for online craft courses, while The Albany and Entelechy Arts have been running a member-led project inviting people to join weekly ‘telephone clusters’ to knit and crochet.

Small acts of care can make a big impact in turbulent times

These projects are among 50 case studies in England and Wales that formed part of the July 2020 report, How creativity and culture has been supporting people who are shielding and vulnerable during COVID-19, published by the Culture, Health and Wellbeing Alliance. These new and adapted initiatives helped stem the tide of loneliness, one of the key factors identified as contributing to poor mental health. My hope is that such interventions – and the bleak statistics about the worsening mental health crisis – will propel efforts to integrate creativity into health and social care in future. But more research needs to be done to provide a framework for this activity.

I have become a director of the Lived Experience Network (LENs), a group of people who understand personally the benefits of creative and cultural engagement to individual and collective wellbeing, and who will act as advocates and advisers to organisations. Among them are people living with brain injuries, PTSD, or who have undergone cancer treatment or support those living with these conditions. My own experience is drawn from caring for my mother, who had dementia. I began doing embroidery with her – something she was always good at – and she quickly started taking the lead, teaching me new skills. In these moments, I switched from being her carer to becoming her daughter again, an experience so valuable for both of us and which I documented in my 2016 film, One Day When We Were Young. While she was crafting, my mother relaxed and her speech became more fluid. She even showed improvements on cognitive tests and continued doing embroidery until she passed away.


One Day When We Were Young by Mah Rana, a film from 2016

People living with psychological or physical health conditions, or who were already experiencing poverty before the pandemic, have been disproportionately affected by COVID-19. So, with the LENs network, I am working as an artist-researcher with University College London on its Community Covid project (funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and a UCL Rapid Response grant), which aims to understand how vulnerable people or those shielding engage with community assets and resources. The project is formed by a consortium of academics, led by Helen Chatterjee, the LENs and colleagues from the Culture, Health and Wellbeing Alliance, NHS Personalised Care and the National Academy for Social Prescribing, among others.

Increases in wellbeing seem linked with the extent to which participants feel connected to other people

So far, it has identified hundreds of creative resources and activity programmes designed to support people during lockdown – both on and offline. Most are targeting isolation and mild-to-moderate mental health issues. Increases in wellbeing seem linked with the extent to which participants feel connected to other people. We’re also creating an online community of practice, as opportunities for making, sharing and connecting are the key to success. The study is proving the value of developing ‘creative health’ partnerships that harness the collective power of arts, creativity, nature and community assets, in collaboration with health, social care and voluntary third sector services. Our plan is to synthesise the evidence and offer best practices to feed into strategic planning on local and international levels.

Another vital step was the launch in March of the National Centre for Creative Health – an organisation that aims to make creative approaches a core part of health and care provision, while providing important strategic links between research, policy and practice. It will be working in partnership with UCL to support the world’s first Masters in Arts and Sciences (MASc) in Creative Health, starting in September 2021. It’s a sign of things to come. Giving people more choice about their care, as well as ways to connect with others through the arts, is profoundly empowering and will help drive health equity in the UK and beyond.


This article first appeared in the Mind & Body issue of Crafts

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