UCL Centre for Neurorehabilitation seminar: Lucinda Jarrett

In 2015 Rosetta Life, the arts-in-health innovation charity that I lead, was commissioned by Guys and St Thomas’ Charity to co-design, co-produce and implement an interdisciplinary arts intervention combining movement, song making and song with South London stroke communities that would help reduce the anxiety and depression experienced by those living with the effects of a stroke by making an effective and measurable impact on their recovery. 

The practice that emerged from this research we named Stroke and Brain Odysseys, partly in tribute to the struggle that people have to make to get back home after a stroke, and partly in simple tribute to the journeys we make between islands of cognition, movement, language, music and image to recover our functioning.  I will look at the practices of co-design, co-production and co-creation and at the ethics and complexities of introducing co-design and co-creation in healthcare. 

This talk looks at the emergence and rapid rise of arts and health practices and where Stroke and Brain Odysseys situates itself between arts therapies, arts practices, social prescribing, applied theatre and community arts.  

 I will illustrate this by drawing on over 100 videos co- produced with communities of people living with brain injury: the videos are of workshops, performances and seminars that have been produced over the past ten years.  I will select key videos that illustrate defining moments in the development of the practice and define its place in a growing complex web of arts and health.