Affective materials: a processual, relational, and material ethnography of creative making in community and primary care groups Sarah Desmarais Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Award with Falmouth University and Arts for Health Cornwall Awarding Institution: University of the Arts London February 2016 ABSTRACT This research concerns neglected affective, relational, material, and processual dimensions of amateur crafts practice in an arts-for-health context. Existing studies on the social impacts of the participatory arts are prone to blur the borders between advocacy and research, and are vulnerable to accusations of ‘policy-based evidence making’ (Belfiore and Bennett, 2007, p.138). Researchers have relied predominantly on interview material and surveys, and there is a lack of fine- grained, long-term, ethnographic work based on participant observation. The distinctive potentials of making in this context, furthermore, have barely been investigated. This thesis addresses these deficits through a sustained ethnographic study of two wellbeing-oriented crafts groups supported by Arts for Health Cornwall (AFHC). One group was based in the community, the other in primary care. Observation produces novel understandings of the potential benefits of crafting for health as emergent properties of particular locations, relationships, and practices organized in distinctive ways around creative making. Firstly, as a counterweight to normative views of amateur crafts creativity as soothing and distracting, this study highlights a range of transformative affects including frustration, creative ambition, and enchantment. Secondly, countering an atomistic, stable depiction of such affects, this study describes them as fluid aspects of making processes. Thirdly, these unfolding processes are seen to be inseparable from the intersubjective (peer-to-peer and participant-facilitator) dimensions of creative groups. Lastly, this in vivo perspective problematizes a view of materials as an inert substratum upon which makers exercise their creative powers, and highlights the relevance of a ‘vital materialism’ (Bennett, 2010) for understanding the potential benefits of manual creativity. Sustained observation also produces a situated, spatial account of the extended networks of community belonging produced by the activities of such groups. Fieldwork is contextualized within a wider field using interviews with nine UK arts for health organizations. Consideration is also given to the influence of contemporary discourses of wellbeing, agency, and creativity on policy making in the area of arts for health. Findings have implications for good practice in the field, and for further research to inform political leadership concerning the role of the arts in health. These implications are drawn out in relation to the potential future contribution of the arts within a UK health economy undergoing rapid, crisis- driven transformation. TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 6 DEDICATION 8 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 9 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS 10 CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION 11 1.1. Overview 11 1.2. Chapter structure 14 1.3. A note on photographs 18 CHAPTER 2. CONCEPTUALIZING THE BENEFITS OF THE ARTS, THE MEANING OF WELLBEING, AND THE NATURE OF CRAFTS PRACTICE: A REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE 20 2.1. Introduction 20 2.2. Researching the health and social impacts of the arts 20 Defining arts for health 20 Historical background to the research culture 21 The contemporary arts for health research programme 25 2.3. Limitations of policy-based evidence making 27 Questioning the toolkit approach 27 Questioning the rhetoric of evidence-based policy making 28 Looking beyond evidence of impact 29 2.4. Researching wellbeing 30 The arrival of wellbeing on the political stage 31 Economic research 31 Psychological research 32 Sociological research 34 2.5. Limitations of the wellbeing agenda 35 Agency problematized 35 The happiness imperative problematized 39 2.6. Researching crafts practice 41 Historical determinants of the category 'craft' 42 Economies of contemporary crafts practice 43 A social agenda for the crafts 47 2.7. Neglected dimensions of amateur crafting for health 52 Process in amateur crafts practice 52 The material world in amateur crafts practice 53 The interpersonal in amateur crafts practice 54 2.8. Conclusion 55 CHAPTER 3. METHODOLOGICAL UNDERPINNINGS 56 3.1. Introduction 56 3.2. Existing research into arts and mental health: some conventional approaches 56 Retrospective evaluations 57 Prospective evaluations 59 Experimental research 60 Economic effectiveness studies 61 3.3. An alternative approach: geographies and ethnographies of arts for health 64 3.4. Methodological challenges 66 Ethics: questionable entanglements 67 Epistemology: questionable interpretations 70 3.5. Design of the current project 75 Starting point 75 Choosing a setting for a second group 77 My position as researcher 78 Data collection 81 Ethical considerations 83 Data analysis 85 From analysis to thesis 87 3.6. Conclusion 89 CHAPTER 4. TWO GROUPS USING CRAFTS FOR WELLBEING 91 4.1. Introduction 91 4.2. Hellan Crafts Group: creative making on prescription 91 History 91 Setting 93 Facilitation 93 Activities 94 Participants 96 4.3. Pendon Crafts Group: creative making in the community 98 History 98 Setting 100 Activities 102 Participants 103 Sustainability 104 4.4. Conclusion 105 CHAPTER 5. BEYOND COMFORT AND SATISFACTION: EXTENDING NORMATIVE ACCOUNTS OF THE AFFECTIVE DIMENSIONS OF MAKING 106 5.1. Introduction 106 5.2. Pleasure in creative making 108 Excitement 109 Productivity 112 5.3. Displeasure in creative making 115 Disobedient bodies 117 Intransigent materials 119 Sinking feelings 121 5.4. The group as a facilitating relational environment 131 Facilitation 131 Peers as supporters 133 The group as structure 134 5.5. Conclusion 135 CHAPTER 6. MUDDLE, UNCERTAINTY AND PLAYFULNESS IN CREATIVE MAKING: AN AESTHETICS OF FORTUITY 137 6.1. Introduction 137 6.2. Barriers to creative spontaneity 140 Cultural pressures 140 Developmental pressures 141 6.3. The group as a safe playground 142 Facilitating interpersonal safety 143 Facilitating creative safety 146 6.4. Playful engagements 152 Having a go 153 Making a mess 154 Improvising 155 Bricolage 157 Rule breaking 158 Experimentation 160 Innovation 161 6.5. Conclusion 162 CHAPTER 7. VISION, AMBITION AND ACHIEVEMENT IN CREATIVE MAKING: AN AESTHETICS OF AGENCY 165 7.1. Introduction 165 7.2. What agency? Whose agency? 167 Creative agency as personal 167 Creative agency as social 168 Creative agency as distributed 169 7.3. Collaborating with material partners 170 Makers articulating material agency 170 Materials extending makers' agency 172 Entanglement and enchantment 173 7.4. An anatomy of project-based making 174 Practising 175 Reflecting 178 Imagining 181 Planning 182 Making decisions 185 Reproducing and reinventing 188 7.5. Conclusion 194 CHAPTER 8. AFFECTIVE PRACTICES: PERFORMATIVE DIMENSIONS OF AGENCY AND CONNECTION IN CREATIVE MAKING 196 8.1. Introduction 196 8.2. Materializing agency 199 8.3. Materializing connection 206 8.4. Transposable inclinations? 212 8.5. Conclusion 216 CHAPTER 9. A PATCHWORK ECONOMY OF UK CRAFTING FOR HEALTH 219 9.1. Introduction 219 9.2. Nine UK organizations using crafts for health 222 Locations 222 Histories and funding 227 9.3. Articulating the distinctive potentials of crafts for health 233 Playfulness 235 Frustration and failure 236 Decision making 237 Reflection 239 9.4. Challenges for practitioners 241 Responding to economic pressures 242 Responding to practical pressures 243 Responding to emotional pressures 244 Working for crumbs, or for love 247 Challenges of a volunteer economy 248 9.5. Group crafting on prescription 250 9.6. Pockets of constraint—or spaces of freedom? 253 9.7. Conclusion 256 CHAPTER 10. CONCLUSIONS 258 10.1. Introduction 258 10.2. From preliminary design to completed artefact 259 10.3. Original contributions to knowledge 261 10.4. Implications for practice in the field of crafts for health 263 10.5. Avenues for future research in the field of crafting and arts for health 267 10.6. Farewells 269 10.7. Postscript 270 BIBLIOGRAPHY 272 APPENDICES 311 Appendix 1. Pendon Crafts Group flyer 311 Appendix 2. Hellan Crafts Group consent form 312 Appendix 3. Pendon Crafts Group information sheet/consent form 313 Appendix 4. Schedule of interviews 314 Appendix 5. AFHC workshops programme 317 6 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 1.1. Rug-hooked textile at the outline stage in the Pendon Crafts Group (Photo: David Lidstone, 2013) 11 1.2. Nadine (left) taking a first print from her lino block, with my help (Photo: David Lidstone, 2013) 18 2.1. Pendon Crafts Group, drypoint etching and mosaic (Photo: David Lidstone, 2014) 52 3.1. At work, aproned on the right, as participant researcher in the Pendon Crafts Group (Photo: David Lidstone, 2014) 67 3.2. Mosaic head, Pendon Crafts Group (Photo: David Lidstone, 2014) 75 3.3. Generating notes on codes (Photo: Sarah Desmarais, 2014) 86 4.1. Members of the Hellan Crafts Group at work on a quilt (Photo: Lisa Faisey, 2014) 91 4.2. Members of the Pendon Crafts Group at work on mosaics (Photo: David Lidstone, 2014) 98 5.1. Strips of silk dyed by a member of Hellan Crafts Group (Photo: Sarah Desmarais, 2014) 111 5.2. Companionable making on a winter afternoon in the Pendon Crafts Group (Photo: David Lidstone, 2013) 114 5.3. Starting a mosaic project in the Pendon Crafts Group (Photo: David Lidstone, 2014) 128 6.1. Talking and making in the Pendon Crafts Group (Photo: David Lidstone, 2013) 145 6.2. Experimenting with properties of water and ink in the Pendon Crafts Group (Photo: David Lidstone, 2014) 149 6.3. Making use of printed source materials in the Pendon Crafts Group (Photo: David Lidstone, 2014) 150 6.4. Messy drypoint printmaking in the Pendon Crafts Group (Photo: David Lidstone, 2014) 155 6.5. Combining a variety of found materials in the Pendon Crafts Group (Photo: David Lidstone, 2014) 158 7 7.1. Abby's silk strips in the Hellan Crafts Group (Photo: Sarah Desmarais, 2014) 171 7.2. Printmaking with an etching press in the Pendon Crafts Group (Photo: David Lidstone, 2014) 173 7.3.