First Meeting

On June 30th 2015 the Art Script learning group had their first meeting, there were 12 people present ranging from emerging to established artists and commissioners, all with experience and interest of working within health.

Nancy Evans from Artis Community introduced the context behind the learning group in line with the guidelines from Artworks Cymru. A few questions were outlined as areas to talk about and these helped to form the discussions.

What do we already know?

What activites will our group undertake?

What issues do we need to explore?

How do we begin to explore them?

There were general discussions about what we might do and questions we need to think about in order to meet the aims of the learning group. Suggestions included:

Identifying the right GP's, ones that would 'buy into' Arts on Prescription.

What the structure of an Arts on Prescription might be?

What would the expereince be as a patient?

Would the sessions be a closed series or a rolling drop in?

Ethical and legal questions and issues would be likely to arise - how would these be dealt with?

It was also mentioned that funding could be a driver - who is likely to pay for this?

and if we looked at funding models from England, would the difference in the healthcare financing structure - i.e. GP's holding their own budgets - mean that we would have to look at alternatives for funding?

It was suggested therefore that it might need to happen as part of a local authority provision rather than health board and it was mentioned that currently the routes to alternative provisions are slow and that GP's don't have anything they can send patients to. It was mentioned that in Abertawe Bro Morgannwg UHB there are 'connectors', people who help to connect patients to local provisions.

The "Welsh Social Services and Wellbeing act" will be publised in Decemeber 2015, and although the full content isn't yet known it is thought that this provision will include interaction and preventative strategies and that third sector organisations will be contracted in to supply these services.

The exercise referral scheme was discussed, maybe Arts on Prescription could follow a similar structure for GP referrals. Are some GP's more likely to refer than others? would it be good idea to identify these GP's, as they are more ikely to use an Arts on Prescription service.

We talked about existing Arts on Prescription models that we knew about, this included Artlift in Gloucestershire, Creative Alternatives in Liverpool and Artshine in Bristol, and decided we need to look into these in more detail. This raised questions about what is it we want to find out about them? the size of the schemes, how are patients referred? when did it start? and how did it start? how are the sessions supported? 'effectiveness' and how is this monitired? how do you insure quality? and how do you standarise practice?

This led us to wonder whether it might be important to link up to academic research to help "prove" the efficacy of any pilot projects that may emerge and if so where might this come from? We discussed the local academic contacts the group had that might be interested in this research? and then whether there is any reserch of this kind already out there?

Discussions then moved onto 'who are the patients?" it is believed that most current models of arts on prescription target mild mental health, but that other health issues could also be improved sush as obesity, isolation, and asthma.

The tiered model of care was mentioned where 'tier zero' is community and public health strategy's to care, this links to the 5 ways to wellbeing and would be where Arts on Prescription and preventative strategys would fit in.

This meeting was very 'opening', asking lots of questions, which in turn created more questions. We assigned ourselves tasks to do before the next meeting that will help to explore this further. Some people took on case studies of exisiting models in England, others are to follow up academic links and research, finding out more about the exercise referal scheme and beginning discussions with people working in the NHS.

Next meeting is September 2015