It is well known within the industry that Participatory Arts Practitioners can be impacted – psychologically, emotionally and mentally – through their work with vulnerable people in diverse communities.  This can result in practitioners suffering with secondary trauma and compassion fatigue.  How can practitioners understand and take care of their own wellbeing, whilst remaining passionate about caring for others?

This workshop is aimed at Participatory Arts Practitioners who would like to gain an insight into their own stress/trauma responses in their work and develop creative and strategic ways of addressing those responses in order to foster creative resilience.

The session will offer a whole body and mind approach to practitioner awareness and self-care, drawing from neurobiological research and creative, embodied therapies.  This experiential two hours will include:

• Embodied self-awareness based on ‘bottom up’ processing of emotions rather than ‘top down’ thinking.

• Movement based strategies – exploration of posture, gait, movement, positioning as responses to stressful or emotionally intense situations.

• Creative exploration

• Shared experience within the group to enable peer support

This experiential learning will inspire the development of a strategic ‘tool-kit’ for practitioner self-care which might include strategies around nervous system regulation and identifying stress response markers and combatting vicarious trauma.

About Roshmi Lovatt

Roshmi worked in the Arts and Health field before training as an Arts Psychotherapist. She runs a clinic offering counselling, psychotherapy, arts therapies, supervision and reflective practice.Her particular interest is to support professionals to work sustainably in jobs which induce burn out, compassion fatigue and vicarious trauma.This has included work with arts therapists, community artists, teachers, justice service workers, NHS staff and refuge workers. Roshmi has a trauma informed, relational, embodied, creative and social justice led model of working which validates the whole individual within their context.

Event Details

This event takes place in person at Arts & Health Hub HQ in Peckham, South London. The event is on October 5th 2021 from 2.30pm – 4.30pm. Unfortunately our HQ is on the 1st floor without access to a lift, as part of a complex of artist studios. Where possible for events in partnership with other venues we always aim to work with accessible venues.

This workshop is for actively working participatory artists whose practice involves working alongside vulnerable persons/communities.

Interested in Attending?

To express interest in attending then please get in touch with us by e-mailing info@artsandhealthhub.org and we’ll send you more details.

Please note: capacity is limited to 6-8 participants. We anticipate that unfortunately we will not be able to accommodate all requests to join this workshop due to demand.