Arts-for-Health: A User Informed Framework for Promoting Mental Wellbeing Within a Marketplace

This thesis explores how arts-for-health service-providers, working in mental well-being, might better promote their market value. It responds to insights gathered throughout the research project by creating a Framework of Promotional Communication. This emergent framework can be used by arts-for-health service-providers to inform the design of their promotional material. Taking an innovative approach to philosophy and practice, I incorporate three core values into the aims of this thesis: 1) that the framework can help arts-for-health providers gain comparable power/success to medical providers 2) that arts-for-health service-providers use transparency within their communications, to heighten the meaningfulness of their provisions to their users 3) that the arts-for-health service-providers supported through the framework are treated equitably, regardless of their disciplinary background The inquiry applied a pragmatic methodology, and a life-world approach was incorporated to frame the input of participants. The participants engaged in oral storytelling, alongside three visual activities: 1) The Tree of Life, 2) The Scale of Influence, and 3) The Seven Orientations. These activities functioned to draw out market-relevant information from participant’s narratives. Within these activities, participants were invited to code their own data, which unveiled unique and unexpected findings. These findings were analysed through a tiered set of analyses, which were: 1) Narrative Compositional Analysis of participants well-being systems/narratives; 2) Evaluation of Scales of Influence and Seven Orientation frames for use in the framework; 3) Evaluation of Resilience Language for use in the framework; 4) Thematic Analysis of latent themes. The results are provided through a 12-point framework which is divided into three sections: 1) The Threat to be Addressed 2) The Solution to be Deployed 3) Contextualising the Service I propose that the use of this framework can help to improve the strength of arts-for-health services within the field of mental health and well-being, both in relation to attracting service- users and accessing support from funders.

Name dc:type.qualificationname

PhD

Level dc:type.qualificationlevel

Doctoral

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

De Montfort University

Year dc:date.issued

2023

Author dc:creator

• Hearst, Jane

Licence

• https://dora.dmu.ac.uk/bitstreams/2b07f7c3-50df-46a4-a9a1-ad228af1987c/download