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9 Mar 2023
This week, Noémie Soula and Michael Tan have run a ‘Care and Kindness’ workshop for Sheffield Hallam University Mental Health Nursing Students, equipping them with creative activities to use during their Community Placements.
This exploratory workshop on 7 March explored the use of creative approaches and activities to foster young people’s caring sensibilities and awareness of others, in order to create a supportive and caring community.
The creative activities, designed by Michael Tan and Noémie Soula, will be delivered by Mental Health Nursing students as part of their community placements at three different schools in and around Sheffield.
The placement allows the students to explore how low level mental health interventions for children and young people are delivered by the wider healthcare community (including local council services, charities and organisations such as dance schools) outside the NHS. An integral part of the placement is the use of the exercises developed by Lab4Living. Following the workshop, the students will then deliver these execrcises to groups of children and young people in schools and out of school clubs. The exercises will be supported by the students’ knowledge of mental health interventions such as CBT.
Our aim for the designed sessions is to promote care, kindness, trust and bonding. We’ve put together a suite of activities for the students to use and be inspired by.
Michael Tan – project leader and workshop facilitator
The aim of the workshop was to present and demonstrate some creative activities. The workshop allowed a better understanding of the designed activities for the students to get a creative scaffold to work from. It generated a lot of discussion among students and staff to pursue the work further.
The activities and workshop draw on Michael and Noémie’s Gestures of Care research. A further workshop will take place in June in order to debrief after the students’ placements are completed.
In addition to this, the team will be delivering workshops in conjunction with the CHIMP mood management approach, exploring the work on Professor Steve Peters has created named the CHIMP paradox.
There was incredible student engagement at the workshop, with stimulating exchanges and discussions. There was lots of input from the students regarding the projects. We received very positive feedback from students and the project leader after the workshop and are looking forward to get more feedback after their placement finishes at the end of June.
Noémie Soula – project assistant and workshop facilitator