What we do

Our research themes at the Centre for Arts and Wellbeing

Our research and enterprise strengths - in drawing, materiality, inclusive design and narrative - are enhanced through collaborations with experts across nursing, midwifery, mental health, psychology and medicine. We are organised through six themes:

We are organised through six themes representing creative practice approaches:

• Drawing, health and wellbeing
• Making well
• Inclusion through narrative
• Creative methodologies
• Sustainable communities

We welcome approaches from potential PhD students who are interested in working with us under these themes. Visit our 'Join us' page for more information on a PhD with the Centre for Arts and Wellbeing.

Drawing, health and wellbeing

Drawing can be used to learn, investigate, communicate, express and relieve suffering. It is used in a range of health and wellbeing contexts including the care of children with autism and people living with dementia, as a therapeutic activity in mental health settings, and as a form of mindfulness or meditation. Drawing is used as a method of communication between health professional and patient, helping to convey complex diagnostic information or illness experiences.

The network of drawing, health and wellbeing researchers includes academic staff, PhD students, practitioners and artists, and extends to the USA, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. 

Achievements in this area include:

• Stibbon, E. Freezing Point: Kunst unter Null Grad Celsius (Art below Zero Degrees Celsius), 13 February - 18 May 2022, Villa Merkel Galarien, Esslingen Am Neckar, Germany.
• Lyon, PM and Turland, M (2019) 'Visualising the body: health professionals’ perceptions of their clinical drawing practices'. Medical Humanities, BMJ Journals.
• Bullen, D (2019)  Practicing Presence: Drawing Near and Far

We welcome approaches from potential PhD students who are interested in how drawing practice intersects with issues of wellbeing in its broadest sense. Visit our 'Study with us' page at the Centre for Arts and Wellbeing.

Emma Stibbon, Glacier Tongue, watercolour and graphite on paper 126 x 185cm. 2020. (Courtesy of the artist, full copyright retained).

Making well  

Through the act of making - our choices and uses of materials, and the ways we make our world from those materials - we are involved in critical decisions that impact upon wellbeing throughout society. This theme brings academic and creative attention to making, materials and craft techniques, with research that is applied to a diverse range of fields, from health to climate change, the impact on education, sustainability and innovation. Expert understanding comes from a range of scholarly and practice disciplines including fashion, textiles, craft, material sciences and architecture. Research has investigated issues such as the relationship between textiles, repetitive processes and mental health, particularly in relation to the rites of bereavement, creative research into materials to enhance sustainability dialogues in order to bring about change.

Achievements in this area include:

• Remaking Guernica. Nicola Ashmore uses film and commissioned tapestry making to explore political inclusivity and protest.
• Sustainable Materials in the Creative Industries. Jules Findley’s AHRC-funded work examined fashion and textiles as part of a UK-wide study highlighting waste in many creative industries.
• Textiles and scabies, using textiles as a medium to explore scabies in care homes, in collaboration with Brighton and Sussex Medical School.

We welcome approaches from potential PhD students who are interested in craft and making in the context of wellbeing. Visit our 'Study with us' page at the Centre for Arts and Wellbeing.

Inclusion through narrative

The ways in which individuals and societies make and communicate their stories influences identity, builds understanding and resilience, shares diversity and nurtures equality. This theme considers how storytelling can be used to extend cross-disciplinary communities of practice across health, the humanities and the arts. It operates a programme of symposiums that inform our Creative Writing with Wellbeing BA, and a book series with Intellect.

Achievements in this field include:

• The immobilities of gender-based violence in the Covid-19 pandemic.
• Clothes on our back, exploring the role of storytelling in decolonising pedagogy in Higher Education 

We welcome approaches from potential PhD students who are interested in narrative making or analysis in the context of inclusion, health and wellbeing. Visit our Study with us page for more information on a PhD with the Centre for Arts and Wellbeing.

Creative methodologies

Creative methodologies is a rapidly developing area, which cuts across disciplinary boundaries and sectors, with the potential to radically alter how we think about research and practice. We use creative tools, techniques and knowledge to understand more about the worlds in which we live, explore problems, and develop solutions related to health and wellbeing.  Our methods are arts-based, transformative, social-justice based, technologically-driven, and/or incorporate innovative mixed-methods, with outputs including poetry, visual art, plays, dance, film and web-based tools. We also work with external partners, adopting a transdisciplinary, collaborative and community-focused approach to research and enterprise. 

Our achievements in this field include:

• Realising the potential of collaborative arts-based research, sought to develop and realise the potential of a 'collaborative poetics' methodology,
• ART/DATA/HEALTH tackled two key issues in healthy aging and wellbeing: health literacy and digital skills, by creating an innovative and interdisciplinary process that offers the public and professionals new tools at the intersections of data science with art practice.

We welcome approaches from potential PhD students who are interested in creative methodologies and cross-boundary research practice. Visit our 'Study with us' page at the Centre for Arts and Wellbeing.

Sustainable communities

A sustainable community is one that is economically, environmentally and socially balanced, healthy and resilient. This theme aims to understand the role of diverse and collaborative arts in helping foster sustainable communities. It investigates issues and opportunities related to healthy ecosystems and biodiversity, collaboration in achievement of low waste and low emission communities, inclusive place-making and neighbourhood development and socio-economic wellbeing. 

Our achievements in this field include:

• Facilitating the circulation of reclaimed building elements in Northwestern Europe A sustainable architecture project that aims to double the amount of reclaimed building elements being circulated on its territory by 2032.
• Waste its mine its yours at wasteland - graced land. The development of new enterprises positively utilising waste for social and environmental change. 
• Co-designing creative design methods through the creation of a community garden. The inclusion of communities in health care engaging with sustainability. 

We welcome approaches from potential PhD students who are interested in creative methodologies and cross-boundary research practice. Visit our 'Study with us' page at the Centre for Arts and Wellbeing.

Impact and engagement 

The Centre for Arts and Wellbeing at the University of Brighton benefits from the long-standing academic reputation of our institution, with its underpinning ethos of international excellence and impactful community collaboration. The centre capitalises on these strengths across the arts, sciences and medicine, facilitating new foci and opportunity.

The university continues to innovate where it can make the biggest difference to individuals and communities. This includes inclusive practices in all disciplines, developing policy and societal attitudes and generating networks that bring community bodies, academic partners, artists and patient representatives together in countries around the world, including Australia, New Zealand and the USA. It also promotes international understanding of how countries use arts and cultural sectors to promote social development and wellbeing amongst communities with severe challenges.

Our wide-ranging, impactful and high-profile research and knowledge exchange work includes: installations, such as ‘Pandemic Encounters: Being Together in the Deep Third Space’; exhibitions like ‘Storm Cloud’ and ‘Eight Lines’; textual and audio-visual artworks, such as 'Chromatic Fields’ and Emma Stibbon RA’s internationally-acclaimed drawing work exploring the understanding of environmental degradation. 

Who we work with 

The Centre for Arts and Wellbeing is focused on the benefits to individuals and communities that stem from involvement in the arts. 

Local, national and international work has resulted in developments across the agendas of health, inclusivity and sustainability, with long-term ambitions built into all our engagements.

Museums and galleries

• Tate Exchange, Tate, London
• The National Gallery, London
• Victoria & Albert Museum, London
• Design Museum, London
• Brighton and Hove Museum, Brighton
• Fabrica, Brighton
• Phoenix Arts, Brighton
• ONCA, Brighton
• Jerwood Gallery, Hastings, East Sussex
• De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill-on-Sea, East Sussex
• University Gallery and Sallis Benney Theatre, University of Brighton.

Academic institution

• Rhode Island School of Design, USA
• University of Sydney, Australia
• University of Otago, New Zealand,
• Oslo Academy of the Arts (KHiO),Norway
• Nagoya University of Arts, Japan
• King Mongkut’s Institute of Technology Ladkrabang, Thailand.

Health organisations

• Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals Trust
• Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust
• Brighton Health & Wellbeing Centre

Cultural organisations

• Royal Society of the Arts (RSA)
• British Council
• Theatre Royal, Brighton
• QueenSpark Books, Brighton
• Brighton Festival
• Charleston, East Sussex
• The Booker Prize.

Centre for Arts and Wellbeing members have explored the use of drawing practice in medical settings, considering the multiple purposes this serves.

Our research output

Details of research publications and other outputs fostered by the centre and achieved by its members, along with funded projects delivered by the centre, can be accessed on the Centre for Arts and Wellbeing's database of research.

• Visit the Arts and Wellbeing overview page on our research database

• Visit the record of our research publications, other outputs and practice-led research work

• Visit the record of our funded projects.