Practical training and peer networking to protect the health and wellbeing of performing artists working in creative health settings
This free workshop for creative health practitioners is designed to help support safe practice and protect your psychological wellbeing when managing challenging situations.
Creative health work can be deeply meaningful – and sometimes complex. Creative health practitioners often work across community settings, healthcare environments, education spaces, detention centres and arts institutions. Participants may be navigating trauma, marginalisation, illness, isolation, systemic barriers.
This session will explore:
- why challenging situations arise
- recognising early warning signs
- responding safely and professionally
- managing emotional impact
- sustaining ourselves in this work
This will be a discussion-based session, focusing on navigating difficult situations when they arise in the context of creative health work.
Facilitator: Heather Turkington, Dramatherapist
Heather Turkington is a Dramatherapist based in Co.Armagh in Northern Ireland.
Heather’s work sees her specialising in complex trauma, and holds post as Psychological Trauma Therapist in the NHS, working with people experiencing PTSD as a result of the NI conflict.
She also works privately and freelance in both therapeutic and organisational roles.
About the Creative Health Practitioner Wellbeing Series
This workshop is part of a series providing free and accessible support for artists and creators working in creative health.
- Managing Risk: Keep Safe
- Managing Challenging Situations
- Relationships and Boundaries
- Recognising Individual Support Needs
The series has been designed by BAPAM and is supported by the BRIT Trust.
For a growing number of performing artists and creative practitioners, an important part of their career is working in creative health, facilitating programmes to enable participation in creative activity for often vulnerable people in settings such as hospitals, care homes, community groups and detention centres,
Artists and creative practitioners bring a professional, highly skilled, inclusive and person-centred approach to these health initiatives. They care deeply about the communities they work with and often work with people with whom they share lived experience. Working in creative health is rewarding, but this work can take place in complex settings and can be physically, emotionally and psychologically demanding.
Challenges may relate to environmental, systemic and individual factors, including constantly changing working environments, varying support within institutional settings, intersectional challenges such as discrimination, marginalisation, economic precarity and health inequalities, and the considerations of looking after your own wellbeing.
Four sessions, facilitated by healthcare professionals with personal experience in the field, will share practical tools, skills and strategies and encourage peer to peer discussion, to help creative health practitioners protect their own health while providing effective support to participants.
All practitioners, organisers and facilitators working in creative health settings are welcome to join, and are invited to share their own insights, experiences, and perspectives on how best to ensure that everyone working in these contexts can flourish.
If you are working in creative health, these sessions will help you:
- Support participants while managing risk and protecting physical and emotional safety
- Build peer‑to‑peer connections that strengthen your practice and support your wellbeing
- Share strategies for handling unexpected or challenging situations
- Set clear boundaries, clarify roles and understand when and where to seek support
- Feel part of a community of practitioners facing similar challenges
BAPAM
75% of industry professionals are likely to have a work-related physical health or mental health problem during their career.
BAPAM is the UK’s medical charity for the performing arts.
We are a doctor-led clinical organisation, supporting performers, creators and industry professionals with work-related health concerns for over 40 years.
We bring together clinical experts and the creative industry to improve health for everyone in our sector.
To help prevent problems and embed sustainable healthy practice at both an individual and systemic level, we deliver evidence-based education, training and expert consultancy to individuals, businesses and organisations.
When work-related health problems do arise, we provide free, expert clinical assessment to explore how symptoms impact work, and give specialist advice outlining the problem and recommending a safe and effective care pathway.
All our training and expert clinics for people in the performing arts are available for free because of the support of our community. Help us create a healthier world for performing arts professionals. Give £10 today.
The BRIT Trust
The BRIT Trust was established in 1989 by UK record labels with the BPI and the wider music community. Its founding mission was to draw on the transformative power of music and the arts to do good and to enable positive life pathways for young people of all backgrounds – recognising that this can best be achieved by embracing accessibility, diversity and inclusion as key values.
Funded largely by monies raised each year by The BRIT Awards and the Music Industry Trusts Award (MITS), The BRIT Trust has to date made more than 280 grant commitments totalling almost £30 million to a wide range of causes and charities across the UK that inspire people to realise their full potential and life chances, whatever their abilities, ethnicity, gender and sexuality.