Care aesthetics research project
Care as a craft or artful practice.
Key people: Professor James Thompson (PI), Kate Maguire-Rosier, Réka Polonyi
For more information on the lab, visit their website.
The Care Aesthetics: Research Exploration (CARE) project is a three-year, Arts & Humanities Research Council funded project.
It is led by a cross-disciplinary team of theatre and nursing academics and practitioners at The University of Manchester, in collaboration with the Department of Psychosocial Studies at Birkbeck, University of London, the Pennine Care NHS Foundation Trust, and the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester.
CARE asks what happens when we consider care a craft or artful practice.
We look at moments of care that demonstrate embodied, sensory and practical skills – the touch of a hand, holding the other’s gaze, a modified tone of voice.
These are often felt as being done ‘intuitively’ by healthcare professionals and artists working in care settings, and so often become invisible in doing care work.
We believe that once we can more readily describe such skills in care, we might understand care in new ways, and we can begin to value care as a creative practice.
With a focus on understanding how artists, homecare workers and healthcare support staff deliver ‘care’ and interact with people, the project examines those elements to caring that go beyond what is usually seen, heard, felt, noticed, or recognised as ‘care’ in care work.
These aspects of care are what the projects refers to as the aesthetics of care, or care aesthetics.
We believe that care is a sensory and embodied practice that can be considered a craft or art form in its own right. At its best, care is an artful practice of repair for individuals, communities, and the world in which we live. We focus on the art-like qualities of the care we give, experience and receive.
CARE project team
Care aesthetics understands care as embodied (something we do), crafted (something we refine) and made up of sensory experiences (something we feel) between individuals, in groups and communities and between people and objects.
We position care as an aesthetic practice - that is, operating on a sensorial and poetic register of doing and responding. This radical understanding of care as having aesthetics challenges the assumptions that have devalued care labour and caring industries in our society.
Project missions and plans:
- The CARE Project explores how sensory and embodied practices of care can improve care services and change the quality of socially engaged arts practices.
- CARE seeks to elevate care to its proper position as a creative practice that can contribute effectively to health and social care services. The project will highlight the immense skills of care staff and aims to support the caring practices of artists working in health and social care settings.
We believe that the care we give and receive is improved if we attend to its art-like qualities. Similarly, we believe that art making is improved when care is central to its ethos.
As such, the CARE Project aims to bring the ideas of careful art and artful care into dialogue.
The Project follows case studies in multiple settings:
- With healthcare support workers and patients in NHS secure wards;
- With homecare workers in London;
- With theatre artists working in care homes.
The team will also conduct a major study into creative responses to the Coronavirus pandemic.
The project has launched The CARE Lab to bring artists, academics and practitioners from health and social care together to explore new methods and practices of care, and to foster public engagement with the project.
The following individuals and institutions are all key players in the project:
Core team
- Professor James Thompson (PI) – Drama, School of Arts Languages and Cultures, University of Manchester;
- Kate Maguire-Rosier - Postdoctoral Research Associate;
- Réka Polonyi - Postdoctoral Research Associate;
- Professor John Keady (CoI) – Professor of Older People’s Mental Health, Division of Nursing, Midwifery and Social Work, University of Manchester;
- Dr Jackie Kindell (CoI) – Visiting Lecturer, University of Manchester and Head of Allied Health Professionals and Social Workers, Pennine Care NHS Foundation Trust;
- Jenny Harris – Lead Artist, Manchester;
- Dominique Davies – homecare worker and co-researcher;
- Caroline Weimar – homecare worker and co-researcher;
- Dr Kerry Harman (CoI) – Senior Lecturer, Department of Psychosocial Studies, University of London, Birkbeck;
- Chloe Bradwell - PhD researcher and freelance circus artist, University of Exeter.
Partners
- Birkbeck, University of London;
- Pennine Care NHS Foundation Trust;
- Whitworth Art Gallery.
Board members
- Maurice Hamington - Professor of Philosophy, Portland State University, USA;
- Madeleine Bunting, Writer;
- Amanda Stuart Fisher - Senior Lecturer in Applied Theatre, RCSSD, University of London;
- Dawn Edge - Professor of Mental Health and Inclusivity, University of Manchester;
- Sarah Campbell - Senior Lecturer in Social Care and Social Work, University of Manchester;
- Sara Donetto - social scientist and Senior Lecturer, Kings College London;
- Alex Mermikides - Senior Lecturer in Arts & Health, Kings College London;
- Julian Hughes - Consultant in Old Age Psychiatry at Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, and Honorary Professor of Philosophy of Ageing, Institute for Ageing and Health, Newcastle University.
The Care Lab is a space for exploring artful care and careful art.
The Lab hosts events, workshops, and commissions new projects.
These have included a talk on care and poetry, a workshop on creating careful practices with children, an exhibition about caregivers and dementia, and a demonstration of what it means to care for collections.
The Lab’s ambition is to create new narratives about what it means to care artfully, and make art carefully.
The events are for everyday carers, healthcare professionals, artists, academics, activists and everyone interested in the practice of care. These are in person, hybrid and online.
We believe that care is a sensory and embodied practice that can be considered a craft or art form in its own right.
At its best, care is an artful practice of repair for individuals, communities, and the world in which we live. We focus on the art-like qualities of the care we give, experience and receive.
The Lab has come out of a research project at the University of Manchester and funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council that has been looking at ‘Care Aesthetics’, where careful art and artful care are brought into dialogue. To find out more about the research, see PROJECTS.
The physical space of The Lab is in The Whitworth Art Gallery’s Care Collections Centre.
Find out more about upcoming events at the CARE Lab.
The following list of resources and links will help to broaden your understanding on the work we do:
- Care Collection Centre at The Whitworth
- Museum of Care
- Art and Care interdisciplinary research platform
- UKRI Project ‘Sensing Spaces of Healthcare – Rethinking the NHS Hospital’ (University of Bristol)
- Care Manifesto by the Care Collective
- Claire Cunningham’s Choreography of Care
- Care Aesthetics research in the Netherlands: zorgesthetische werkplaats (in Dutch)