Output details

Practice-as-Research portfolio: From Where You Are

This research project investigated dance improvisation processes and effects, using one-to-one movement encounters between dance artists and long-stay patients at Alder Hey Children’s Hospital’s acute wards (Neuromedical; Oncology).

Research questions:

• How can dance improvisation processes enhance children’s care and wellbeing?

• In what verifiable ways does improvised somatic dance enhance paediatric healthcare?

Funders: Lottery Awards for All; PH Holt Trust; Edge Hill University (EHU).

In general, clinical movement facilitation is the domain of physiotherapy, goal-orientated and target-led. Existing hospital-based research into effects of arts practices includes music and visual arts, not dance. This project investigates person-centred, person-led, improvised somatic movement, where individual stories unfold through creative, expressive movement, and examines artist, not art therapist, efficacy within emerging multidisciplinary, multidimensional approaches to children’s wellbeing.

Methodology: phenomenological - observations by hospital staff, patients, parents, artists-in-residence.

Indications: improvised somatic movement on children/young people undergoing treatment improves mobility, self-esteem, capacity for creative expression; patient/staff relationships; parent/carer morale; supports and complements clinical care.

Evidence Portfolio:

Conference Abstracts by Dowler, ‘Improvising on the Ward’:

• Inspiring Transformations (Northampton University, 2009)

• The Art of Good Health and Wellbeing (Melbourne, 2010)

Article by Dowler:

1. ‘Improvising on the Ward’, Animated (Winter 2010).

Other writings, Dowler (2010):

• ‘A Space to Create: Working with Children in a Hospital’, in Tufnell, M. (ed). Dance, Health and Wellbeing: Pathway to Practice for Dance Leaders Working in Health and Care Settings. Foundation for Community Dance, pp. 63-64. ISBN 9781898409083

• With Hawkins, C (2010) From Where You Are, (Small Things Dance Collective)

Film

From Where You Are: A Dance and Movement Project at Alder Hey Children’s NHS Foundation Trust (2013)

Other

1. North-West Public Health (Arts and Culture) Award 2008

2. Public endorsement, Jane Kennedy MP (2009)