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Funding secured to create unique creative writing programme for stroke survivors
21/08/2024
The University of Wolverhampton has secured almost £30k funding to undertake an impact and research project, Write in the Head, that will create an online creative writing programme for survivors of stroke and other acquired brain injuries.
The University’s Centre for Transnational and Transcultural Research (CTTR) successfully bid for the Arts Council England funding to create a tool that will help healthcare practitioners, stroke survivors and their carers with their recovery after brain trauma.
CTTR inspires, supports, and promotes a wide range of cutting-edge research and public engagement activities that transcend traditional disciplinary and institutional boundaries.
Sebastian Groes, Professor of English Literature in the School of Humanities at the University of Wolverhampton, said: “This impactful project is partly based on my book Right in the Head, an autobiographical account of my personal journey after suffering a stroke in my 30s, and our pilot collaboration with Birmingham City University’s School of Health Sciences and the local West Midlands Stroke Support Group in Wolverhampton.
“This fantastic interdisciplinary project will see us engaging with over 5,000 patients a year. We will be designing a flexible creative writing programme for patients with different abilities. We’re hoping to aid stroker survivors, their carers and the health care professionals that support them to regain functional skills more efficiently.
“We will also offer pathways for patients to work through the psychological turmoil that comes after a stroke. We know that creativity and arts help with recovery after brain injury and by allowing survivors to (re)find their creative voice, ‘Write in the Head’ will ultimately contribute to their overall wellbeing whilst boosting their language and communication skills.”
The University will be working with various external universities and partners including Nottingham University’s Professor Jon McGregor, Birmingham City University’s School of Health Sciences as well as Kate Poll (a Creative Writing for Wellbeing facilitator), poet Denise Saul, Poppy Young (Speech and Language Therapist at Aintree Hospital) and Indira Natarajan (Neurologist at Stoke-on-Trent Hospital).
The University’s Creative Writing and Professional Writing team Dr Rob Francis and Dr Kerry Hadley-Pryce will be working on the project. The multi-disciplinary team will design an initial set of 10 exercises that will be piloted with stroke survivors. The exercises will be graded in complexity and meet different requirements for people with different abilities. More extended exercises will then be produced that will allow survivors to produce their own poems, stories and reflections on their situation. The full programme will be freely available online from November 2025 and can be used by survivors, carers and Health Care Practitioners and well as the general audience.
The project team will use a variety of creative prompts focussing on different objectives and meeting different creative needs. Kate Poll will encourage participants to find beauty in used or broken objects, allowing them to reframe their own experiences as part of their rehabilitative journey. The project will also design prompts for exercises to completed with others and shared in social spaces, helping participants to (re)discover and celebrate their creative voice. For instance, the Orange Exercise uses a multi-sensory approach that draws on people’s sense of touch, smell and taste whilst engaging with Wendy Cope’s poem ‘The Orange’ to create a Happiness List and a creative response that works through people’s experience of their brain injury.
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