Dialogue

Dwell Time delivered a Train Ticket Thoughts workshop on the Penistone Line today. We were also filming and being filmed for a short film for CrossCountry so it was quite full on with lots of conversations going on, all aboard a noisy train. We had conversations with workshop participants about their work and invited them to audio or video record these also. Some were very emotive and powerful.

I’ve been reading Nancy Kline’s Time to Think and she talks about creating a space for thinking (a Thinking Environment). This is where silences aren’t filled unnecessarily and answers aren’t quickly volunteered to a ‘problem’. This kind of holding space for thinking and talking in a reflective way in order to learn and move forward.

Nancy Kline’s 10 Components of Thinking Environments: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYWDCjYmQ7w

Dwell Time were shortlisting for Issue 2 today and we did a full day of going through the contributions discussing them one by one. This dialogue is really critical to the curatorial process and although some contributions barely need much discussion (for example if we unanimously love them), some need quite lengthy discussions about whether they fit the brief and are suitable for the general distribution publication context. It was tiring talking all day but a really good, positive session with an amazing shortlist made.

Today’s training was in substance use and mental health delivered by Forward Leeds. Lots of interesting learning around substance (mis)use and the interrelation to mental health. Although the training didn’t go into comorbidity and dual diagnosis, it did highlight that it’s not straight forward to determine whether certain symptoms are caused by mental illness or drug use, and whether mental illness leads to drug use or drug use leads to mental illness. It’s not straight forward to ascertain from dialogue alone due complexities in individual’s perception of their own health needs, but dialogue is at the core of working with individuals from first contact through to treatment.

I attending a Making Every Contact Count training with Leeds Public Health on Monday. This training talked about active listening and open ended questions (not why questions as implies a judgement) plus signposting.

They also mentioned the onion model (Dahlgren and Whitehead model of health determinants)

And the circle of influence model from a public health framework / social health model perspective.