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Animation Therapy

http://www.animationtherapy.co.uk

This website documents research undertaken by Ashworth in collaboration with occupational therapist Helen Mason, focusing on innovations within the field of animation therapy. Animation therapy offers health professionals pioneering inter-disciplinary therapeutic opportunities to use animation to work with issues affecting families, young adults and children. Animation used in therapy is proving to be effective in assisting therapists to develop therapeutic dialogues with hard-to-reach clients. The animation process enables the client to make work that appears to suspend time, allowing clients opportunities to reflect on what they have made and what it might mean.

The project received seed funding from the National Endowment for Science Technology and the Arts (NESTA) to support a proof-of-concept business plan, and additional funding through Innovation in Mental Health to create a downloadable toolkit. The project has informed both Ashworth’s supervision of PhD students, investigating the therapeutic value of animation, and a successful application to the Medical Research Council (MRC). The MRC-funded project ‘Children's Health State Preferences Learnt from Animation’ aims to develop an instrument to collect information on health status from children. This two-year project with the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and Great Ormond Street Hospital commenced in spring 2013 and is documented online at http://childspla.lshtm.ac.uk.

The Animation Therapy website documents research developed with Helen Mason into the application of animation activities at different levels of ability, exploring its contribution to the training of clients, its power to motivate and its cross-generational appeal. Ashworth and Mason presented the research through a joint paper titled ‘Animation Therapy’ at the international ‘Animation Evolution: Society of Animation Studies’ conference, Edinburgh (2011) and through animation and therapy workshops at the ‘Exeter Animation Festival and Occupational Therapy Conference’ (2010). The research was further disseminated at the international ‘Model of Creative Ability’ conference, London (May 2010).