Working Parts

I have been a member of the Working Parts steering group now for the past three years and it has always been hugely rewarding and beneficial to me, both as an individual and for the organisation I work for. Working Parts has enabled me to discover and learn about a wide range of access and disability issues as well as find out about disability-led organisations and organisations working with disabled people in the Black Country, who may have otherwise gone unnoticed. It has provided essential and useful information about the issues surrounding accessibility and the arts and opened the debate around how creativity and arts can be used to benefit and add value to organisations and individuals’ working practice.

As a result of the networking and advocacy events developed by Working Parts, Multistory have worked with a number of disabled artists, attended and facilitated numerous networking events and recently developed a pilot digital storytelling project at Hallam Street Hospital, West Bromwich.

This pilot project developed as a result of Alan McLean speaking to the psychologist from the hospital who attended a Working Parts networking event. Alan mentioned the aims and the benefits of the group and the psychologist discussed how she would like to use more creative activities within the hospital. As a result, and an informal conversation with me following the event, Alan put me in contact with the psychologist to discuss setting up a series of creative workshops in the hospital. The digital storytelling project was formed as a result of these informal conversations and networks.

Prior to this, Multistory was actively looking, but struggling to find willing groups to participate in digital storytelling workshops in health settings. The conversation I had with Alan was timely but it no way a coincidence as I believe Working Parts provides a huge possible number of different platforms to discuss, develop, share, learn, recommend, think, and open up networks and strengthen connections with one another no matter how big or small. In this case a few conversations lead to the development of a pilot project and got our foot in the door to work with Sandwell Mental Health Trust at Hallam Street Hospital. So who knows where one small step can lead to!

The project is now well under way and we will be in the hospital up to the end of March 2011. We are currently delivering workshops with patients at the hospital to develop their own personal digital stories. A digital story is a 2-3 minute short film that tells a personal story using computer-based tools usually containing a mixture of images, text, recorded audio narration, video clips and/or music. The workshops have been very successful to date and we’ve already had positive feedback from the hospital and the patients. Hopefully in a few weeks we will be able to show a few of the stories on the blog.