Relationships of Kindness

Relationships of Kindness was a project led by Esyllt George, in her role as the former Arts and Health Coordinator for the Cwm Taf Morgannwg University Health Board. The project brought arts and creativity to the working environment across several hospitals managed by the Health Board. The goal was to help support staff at all levels of healthcare to improve their wellbeing, and their relationships with their work environment and colleagues.

Cooked Illustrations was contracted to support the project at two crucial stages.

Staff Participation

 The project would be informed by staff opinions and existing relationship to their working environment. The client needed a way to survey staff members without it feeling entirely like a traditional, corporate-looking survey.

We created an explainer poster that was shared online and throughout the Health Board’s locations. The poster invited participants to think about spaces in their everyday working environments, or places they encountered on the way to work, that made them feel a sense of well-being, joy, or kindness. As part of the survey, participants were asked to photograph these spaces and share them with the Arts Coordinator, as well as a qualitative description of what the photograph was representing. Participants were also asked to submit photographs and descriptions with negative connotations, as a way to identify spaces the Health Board should consider for improvements.

After collecting these photographs and qualitative descriptions, we sat down with the Arts Coordinator to discuss what would best serve the needs of the project. Originally, one of the goals of the survey was to identify spaces that several people would identify as needing “ a bit of love”. Cooked Illustrations would then create a mural or interactive space that would incorporate some of the positive elements participants shared through the survey as a way to create a place staff would like to be in. That approach was vetoed due to resources and limited to a singular site.

Open Source Booklet

 To solve the issue of multiple work sites, Cooked Illustrations suggested we make an open source, downloadable booklet full of creative exercises informed by what common elements appeared in the initial participant survey.

A digital, printable booklet, we argued, could be shared farther afield than one hospital, reaching more staff.

The survey helped the Arts Coordinator identify that participants mentioned outdoors activities, spaces, and elements nearly universally as a positive modifier on their moods, however small that exposure was. Thus, the arts and creative exercises looked at ways to help people engage with natural environments, be around hospital grounds, or on their commutes. And if that wasn’t possible, some exercises looked at bringing a little of the outdoors into people’s work spaces.

With the exercises in mind, Cooked Illustrations designed a small illustrated brochure that takes the user on a journey from desk to forest, from hilly trail to hospital hallways. Our visual communication team wanted to create a booklet that would not just be a one-off read, but something that people actually used, drew on, folded in their back pocket, and used until it fell apart.

We are glad to have been able to support the Arts and Health Coordinator in finding new innovative ways to explore how creativity and arts can support staff wellbeing in a healthcare context. We hope this relationship continues in the future and that this project helps NHS Wales staff find a little bit of joy in their everyday life.

"The Arts and Health Team at CTMUHB would like to invite you to play a game. As part of World Mental Health Week, starting on World Mental Health Day, Sunday October 10th , we’d like you to take some photographs of the things that make you smile in your workplace.”
So opened the callout poster for this project.

The Project

Relationships of Kindness is the culmination of an arts and health research project led by the Arts and Health Team at the Cwm Taf Morgannwg University Health Board with the goal to find out how to improve staff’s wellbeing in the Health Board’s various sites.Cooked Illustrations was contracted to support by creating content that would interest staff members to participate in the research project, as well as to collage any creative output borne from their participation. This material was then used as the basis to create a final piece of artistic output that would fulfil the project’s goals. Originally, this output would’ve been a physical creative intervention at a specific locale. However, as the project progressed, it became clear that a different approach would help increase the project’s reach and impact by directly giving people the tools to improve their wellbeing.

Cooked Illustrations helped in the design of an arts and health toolkit in the form of a printable zine. Full of wellbeing creative exercises to be shared with staff at all levels of the health board, our booklet had to be easy-to-print, shareable, and visually interesting so any user, regardless of their background and role within the organisation, was inclined to use in their own time. Something that would contrast with the usual health board corporate branding was needed.
The majority of the content for this booklet was developed by Health Coordinator Esyllt George. Though, our very own Rachel Smith came up with the idea of “bringing the outdoors inside” through the making of a terrarium. The visual representation was all Cooked Illustration, with recommendations. Like a lot of our projects, it was a team effort to create the best visual communication material for the right context.

This shows the potential of how arts and health can help with staff wellbeing in any environment, but also how creative visual communication can help create buy-in from an otherwise hard-to reach audience.