The funding will enable Dr Bradley to explore practitioners’ experiences of delivering group journaling workshops with mothers and birthing parents, including how different experiences and identities are entangled through creative practice and collaboration.
Through the project, Dr Bradley will work with co-applicants Professor Jennifer Rowsell (also University of Sheffield) and Dr Laura Tommaso (University of Eastern Piedmont, Italy), drawing on creative methodologies including collaging and visual arts as well as narrative interviews. She will also work closely with arts and health practitioners, including through Maternal Journal nationally and The Art House locally in West Yorkshire, to explore how research findings can be developed into practice for arts and health practitioners. The funding supports an end of project knowledge exchange event, as well as points of ongoing dialogue and reflection.
The project will run for a year, starting on 1 November 2025. A part-time Research Associate will be recruited to work with the team. It builds on ongoing research Dr Bradley has undertaken around arts, wellbeing and health over the past four years, including focusing on Maternal Journal groups and workshops, in partnership with arts organisation The Art House in Wakefield. Further work by Dr Bradley includes an international survey of practitioners in 2024, as well as ongoing ethnographic and arts-based research, outputs for which include a co-produced zine.
Dr Bradley said, ‘I am really excited to explore practitioners’ experiences of running creative journaling groups. These groups have such possibilities for mothers and birthing parents at this time of significant change in their lives. In my recent research with journaling practice, I’ve become fascinated by the breadth and depth of experience practitioners bring to this work, and how this frames the workshops and creative outputs. This research will develop important knowledge about arts and health contexts, and in particular creative journaling and its impact on health and wellbeing.’
Funding details: SRG25\250201 Creative journaling at the intersections of art, motherhood and health: practitioner identities and entanglements, PI Dr Jessica Bradley
Complementing this project is work exploring creative journaling practice and interculturality, and Dr Bradley has recently been awarded ESRC IAA Rapid Learning Fund support to explore and showcase how practitioners support and engage with participants from culturally and linguistically diverse communities. This knowledge exchange project contributes to practice at local, national and global levels, as intercultural aspects of creative journaling with mothers and birthing parents are hitherto unexplored. Creative journaling practice in intercultural contexts will be extended through the collaborative production of an accessible practitioner guide (online and printed). The activity is collaborative development of this guide, printing and design of the guide, and a hybrid stakeholder event held at The Art House in collaboration with Maternal Journal which will launch the guide to wider audiences, creating a supportive network.
Funding details: ESRC IAA Rapid Learning Fund, Spring 2025, PI Dr Jessica Bradley
