Humanising systems: using arts practices to create change and reconnect with purpose in social work

This innovative project aims to create new understandings and changes in social practice using arts-based research methods. It aims to explore how art practices including photography narratives and film can be used to achieve changes which enabled practitioners to reconnect with humane social work. It will draw on the lived experiences of social work from the perspectives of practitioners and people who experience social work services to explore how art practices including photography can be used as methods to achieve knowledge exchange, new reflections and learning, with a view to creating more humanised forms of co-created multimodal social work practices. It will use ethnographic methods using photography, film and digital communications to gather data in a local authority social work setting. Knowledge exchange workshops will be used to engage with practitioners/managers to exchange understandings using imagery and creative methods.

This project will use photography and creative artistic methods to explore the experiences of social workers and people they work with. It aims to use these methods to reflect on how social workers experienced, by the social workers themselves and by the people they work with. Social work is sometimes criticised for lacking humanity and this project aims to explore how social work happens, using imagery from photographs and other methods to explore how social work can maintain its humanity and focus on relationship-based practice.

To be confirmed on completion of project