This blog post recalls and reviews one of the summer’s main events supported by CHHS. On 26 June 2023, a collaboration between Great Western Hospitals and Medicine 360, ‘Bodies’ bought together healthcare professionals, medical students, academics and members of the public to explore interdisciplinary approaches to health and healthcare. A combination of talks, panel discussions, poetry readings, animations, and artworks provided opportunities to reflect on the relationship we as human beings have with our own bodies, other people’s bodies and the role of healthcare within this.
The Bad Doctor
Dr. Ian Williams author of The Bad Doctor and The Lady Doctor introduced ‘Graphic Medicine’ an online platform using art, humour and wit to portray different scenarios encountered in healthcare and in his own life as a medical doctor. As a concept, Williams defines graphic medicine as ‘the intersection between the medium of comics and the discourse of healthcare’ providing a careful, yet powerful medium for communicating some of the issues facing clinicians, patients and the NHS. Williams’s work uses comics to educate, empathise and normalise aspects of our lived experience as either patients or healthcare professionals, helping navigate complex topics such as mental health and perceived failure.
The power of storytelling, narrative and visual art was also bought to the fore by Bristol City Poet, Kat Lyons, whose spoken word performance and award-winning animation Duvet Days tells of her struggles with paranoid anxiety following premature menopause. Kat’s work also provides avenues for exploring topics such as mental health, age, and identity, overcoming communication barriers and highlighting the importance of sharing lived experience.
Grief, Death and Donation
The second half of the day opened with a panel discussion on grief by Prof. Lesel Dawson, Prof. Lucy Selman and Prof. Mark Taubert chaired by Dr. Rachel Clarke. This discussion was inspired, in part by the ‘Good Grief Festival’ a community founded by Prof. Lucy Selman aimed at providing people experiencing grief with ‘solace and support through storytelling’. Amongst other things, one of the topics raised was “grief hierarchies” specifically, the idea that some grief experiences are more socially acceptable than others. For example, the grief that often follows miscarriage or still birth was a topic that one of the panellists, drawing on her own lived experience, felt is sometimes associated with a diminished sense of significance, social stigma and taboo. These themes were further amplified by artworks by Clare Clark, Bristol-based conceptual artist whose delicate works were displayed in the Great Hall. Claire’s work aims at breaking down barriers in public discourse surrounding miscarriage and creating awareness of the unresolved pain it can involve.
The significance of normalising discussions about grief, death and dying was also bought to the fore in another talk, ‘The Making of My Dead Body’. The discussion led by anatomist and PhD student, Dayna Stone alongside anatomy administrator Laura Arnold, who told the heartfelt story behind ‘My Dead Body’ a Channel 4 production about Toni Crews, a young woman who donated her body for medical research and public dissection. The talk disclosed a deep sense of connection and gratitude towards Toni, her donation, and its educational significance for medical students, scientific researchers, and members of the public.
Wearable artworks
In another talk, artist and founder of ‘The Alternative Limb Project’ Sophie De Oliveira Barata gave an inspiring talk about her journey from sculptor to designer of wearable art pieces. Sophie works closely with prosthetists and a vast range of clients, including paralympic athletes, musicians, models, performing artists and veterans, to create limbs that enable people to express their individuality and feel empowered. In her talk, Sophie told the story of a young girl who she continuously worked with post-injury to design an age-appropriate limb reflecting her personality and creativity.
Overall, these talks in addition to many others provided new insight into a range of topics surrounding the body and our lived experience of it. A reoccurring theme in each seemed to be a push for acceptance of the body and of ourselves as fundamentally fallible, vulnerable beings. Considering this shared ambition, what many of the talks, performances, and exhibitions demonstrate is the crucial role the arts and humanities can play in helping people to develop new perspectives and navigate complex situations.
(Blog by Kathryn Body, CHHS PGR Representative)