WRITING
Here you can find links to selected writings ranging from the peer reviewed to the polemic, most of which are available as free downloads or web links. There are too many to include in full, and many link to films and public presentations.
A Social Glue
(2021)
Commissioned by the Great Place project in Greater Manchester Combined Authority, A Social Glue sets out how culture and creativity might contribute to the health and wellbeing of the people of Greater Manchester and how over the next five years GM might become the UK’s first Creative Health City Region. Click HERE.
The Manchester
Declaration
The Manchester Declaration was compiled by Clive Parkinson for The Manchester Institute for Arts, Health & Social Change in 2019 and is the product of collective effort. Download the declaration HERE.
Cold Dark Matter
(2019)
Asked to deliver an eight minute 'provocation' for the launch of The Age of Creativity festival at the Whitworth Gallery on 2nd May 2019, Clive created a small performative piece. This is a mix of ideas based on his current direction of thinking and influenced by the people credited at the end of the film, which as ever, is a collection of edits from YouTube. You can read the full text and some footnotes HERE. The short film is available on the FILM page of this website.
A Delicate Ecology
(2018)
On the 13th November 2018 Clive gave the keynote at the national conference of Engage, the lead advocacy and training network for gallery education in the UK. The event, called A Social Prescription explored the intersection between arts, health, wellbeing and education, while challenging government assumptions around social prescribing. It was held in Manchester. The film of this work is available on the FILM section of this website.
WoMH
(2018)
A book chapter in Music, Health, and Wellbeing: Exploring Music for Health Equity and Social Justice. Edited by Sunderland, N., Bendrups, D., Lewandowski, N., Bartleet, B-L. and published by Palgrave Macmillan. Parkinson’s full chapter title is: Weapons of Mass Happiness: Social justice and health equity in the context of the arts. There is a paradigm shift taking place in the way public health, social care and well-being are understood. The arts have a powerful part to play in this process, but for artists, there are challenges to remaining authentic to practice in the face of limited fiscal resources, access to the arts for marginalised people, and a culture of competition. This chapter explores the ways in which art and artists can empower new ways of thinking, being and doing. From jazz and blues to twenty-first-century dementia care, this chapter examines the power of the arts, its manipulation by those with power and calls for a reimagining of the arts and health agenda through a lens of social justice. This work builds on a performative presentation created as a keynote for Artlands, Dubbo 2016. Read the chapter HERE.
A Love Filled Slap in the Face
In January 2016 Clive was invited to share some of his blasting and bombardiering in arts and health, and in particular the process of working with people across the North West of England to develop the Manifesto for Arts & Health (2011). As the guest speaker at the inaugural Arts and Health Check Up, Check In, a collaboration between artsandhealth.ie, Create and The LAB Gallery in Foley Street. Dublin. You can see a recording of his presentation HERE and read his write up HERE.
A Gentle Inquiry into Dark Matter in Arts-based Research
(2017)
Between 2014 and 2017 Clive was a co-investigator on the £1.2million AHRC/ESRC funded Dementia & Imagination project. This three-year project explored how taking part in the visual arts can contribute to the health and well-being of people living with dementia. This public facing handbook offers some guidance and principles for artists and others working in the filed and is available HERE. The projects mixed-methods protocol is available on the British Medical Journal website, HERE. To find out more about Dementia and Imagination and its findings, visit the dedicated web site HERE.
Critical Care
(2017)
This monograph follows the three years Australian artist Vic McEwan spent at Alder Hey Children's Hospital and was written by Clive Parkinson as a reflective account of his time as a participant observer during the Harmonic Oscillator project. This work avoids bio-medical language and reductivism, offering instead a more nuanced reflection on the value of the arts in contemporary health settings. Providing a parallel narrative account of the artists unfolding work, Critical Care sheds light on the complexities of social arts practice, contextualising the role of contemporary artists who pursue a social agenda. Buy a limited edition of this book for £10 inc p&p in the UK HERE.
“In an age of industrial scale medicine and mass privatisation of health services, Parkinson’s book offers us something wholly human in the centre of well-intentioned (and sometimes traumatic) health interventions. It is the story of an artist and a young patient, and an investigation of the possibilities of what artists with a social agenda can offer.”
Dr. Nick Shimmin in Daily Review
A Brightly Coloured Bell-Jar
(2015)
Developed from a seminar delivered by Clive for what was then, The Centre for Medical Humanities in Durham in February 2011, and written up as a book chapter in, Group Therapy: Mental Distress in a Digital Age [A User Guide]. Read the full text HERE.
A Recoverist Manifesto
(2014)
People in recovery from substance use in the UK, Italy and Turkey collaborated with Clive to develop a manifesto that attempts to humanise the face of ‘addiction’. The Recoverist Manifesto aims to dispel the stigmatised myths associated with substance misuse by providing a counter-blast that challenges current clichéd misconceptions by reframing addiction as a health issue and recovery as a civil rights concern. This work was developed alongside Portraits of Recovery. Click on the ENGLISH or ITALIAN version or FILM accompanying this work.
Inequalities, the Arts and Public Health: Towards an International Conversation
(2013)
This paper considers how participatory arts, informed by thinking in public health, can play a significant part internationally in addressing inequalities in health. It looks beyond blinkered national overviews to consider what would make for meaningful international practice. It identifies the reflexive consideration of participatory practice – involving people routinely marginalised from decision-making processes – as possible avenues into this work. Clive presented this work as a keynote at the 4th International Arts and Health Conference, Fremantle, Australia, November 2012. He subsequently wrote and published a version in collaboration with Mike White, available HERE, which was republished in 2017 in Arts, Health and Wellbeing: A Theoretical Inquiry for Practice. Details HERE.
Towards Sentience
(2013)
A book chapter for The Handbook of Interior Architecture and Design exploring the place of contemporary art and design in relation to end of life care, and how we die. The full chapter is HERE.
Present Tense
Co-Curating the exhibition Mortality: Death and the Imagination in 2013 with Dr Steven Gartside, Clive contributed a chapter to the lavish exhibition catalogue. His chapter asks what relevance do the contemporary arts have when faced with our own mortality. An exploration of attitudes towards wellbeing, death and artists, and alongside Towards Sentience, this is work that has far more poignancy now. Read the full chapter HERE.
Below are some more quick links to more historical pieces of writing, alongside delicious pieces of student work, which you’ll also find dotted around the website. Where the individual artists names will link you directly to their work and/or websites.
Illustrations for this work (see below) are by Bridget Hines