Creative forms: booklets by the hospital senses collective.

This article details the creation of a series of booklets designed to explore sensory encounters with hospitals and healthcare environments. The booklets were devised as a series of prompts or provocations, created to attend to and examine embodied, sensory encounters with health/care settings rather than to present research findings. Bringing together an expansive range of backgrounds and skill sets the booklets were created to sit within and beyond language through their design, form and content. Within this article we share the ways in which the works are deliberately unfinished and exploratory as this necessitates that those interacting with them create their own meanings and explore how they think and feel about health/care environments. The form and design promote a certain attentiveness and embodied engagement. For example, users must engage with the works carefully, gently turning and unfurling the fragile pages. This is further illustrated through qualitative insights collected from users of the booklets. Throughout this paper we argue for multiplicity in the ways in which we explore and present sensory-focused research. Our attention to multiplicity is supported not only through the design, form and content of the physical booklets but through the creative audio description, text and images created to complement and support these works. These are available online to ensure that our provocations are widely accessible. Within this paper we critique how a reliance on narrative form can limit the ways in which we engage with spatial, sensory and emotional concepts. Such concepts are by their very nature challenging to articulate and arguably require more-than-text-based approaches. We propose that embracing creative, exploratory and seemingly risky routes to examining and presenting such concepts is critical in expanding research.

Using creative, sensory and embodied research methods when working with people with dementia: a method story.

BACKGROUND: : People with dementia are often excluded from research due to ethical concerns and a reliance upon conventional research methods which focus on recall and verbal expression. METHODS: Creative, sensory and embodied research methods typically involve techniques that conceptually bring individuals "into" the research, thus affording an expressive capacity that traditional methods do not. This paper details a "method story", presenting three interlinked cycles of study used to explore the significance of clothing to people with dementia living in a care home. The studies drew upon arts-based and design led practices. This paper details the methods used and the opportunities that they presented when exploring the lived experience of dementia. RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS: Creative, sensory and embodied approaches enabled people with dementia to engage with research, supporting imaginative, spontaneous and flexible participation. This supports the use of novel methods when undertaking research with people who have dementia.

Rethinking creative research methods in response to COVID-19: Creating a remote research kit.

The 'Sensing Spaces of Healthcare: Rethinking the NHS Hospital' project involves working with National Health Service (NHS) staff, patients and visitors to explore their experiences of hospital environments. Over the course of the project, creative approaches centred on art-based and design-led practices are employed to research people's experiences. Such approaches often involve working closely with participants during sessions. As COVID-19 infection control measures have affected in-person research, it has been necessary to develop and adopt alternative low-contact approaches. This article presents the development of a remote creative research kit designed to be used without a researcher/practitioner present. The kit has been developed through work with creative practitioners, hospital arts organizations, patient and public contributors and learning from public engagement events. The remote creative research kit has led to rethinking and reimagining the ways in which such approaches may be of benefit more broadly in healthcare settings.