Wellbeing project Sharing HOPE scoops top honour
Main image above: The Sharing HOPE team on stage collecting their award at the Nursing Times Workforce Summit and Awards in London.
An arts initiative to help staff reflect on and open up about the challenges they faced during the pandemic has won the Best Staff Wellbeing Initiative at the Nursing Times Workforce Summit and Awards in London.
Arts in Health Co-ordinator Johan Skre, who led the Sharing HOPE (The Art of Healing Together) project alongside Quality Improvement Lead Jayne Whitney, said: "We were gobsmacked when they said, ‘And the winner is Swansea Bay University Health Board’.
"Out of 12 finalists from all over the UK, we won Best Staff Wellbeing Initiative! Winning this prestigious award validates our approach to the challenge of staff wellbeing and reaffirms that now is the right time to be innovative in supporting our workforce and invest in Arts in Health.
"The Sharing Hope Team is a brilliant example of cross-disciplinary coproduction between Arts and Health and Quality Improvement.
"We are especially grateful to Stephen Jones for believing in and enabling this project in the first place, our line management in Corporate Nursing for their continued support and lead artist Gini Hearth for everything she does for our staff on a daily basis.
"And of course The Arts Council of Wales and The Baring Foundation for funding this project from its conception in 2021 until September 2024.
“This award makes us more determined than ever to build on our model, evaluate, grow and make it a sustainable service for all our staff.”
Sharing Hope is a therapeutic arts project available to all Swansea Ba University Health Board staff. It highlights the power of sharing stories, capturing COVID recovery, processing moral trauma and the de-stigmatisation of mental health.
The project aims to improve staff wellbeing and retention, to maximise the opportunities for early recognition of anxiety and depression, and prevent escalation.
Sharing HOPE organised sand sculpture events at local beaches in the summer.
It is a collaboration between Arts and Heritage and Suicide Prevention Quality Improvement leads.
The project received strategic funding from the Arts Council of Wales and The Baring Foundation in 2021 as part of their national Arts and Minds programme, improving mental health through the arts.
In the first 18 months, more than 950 members of staff have engaged with artists who facilitate a wide variety of high-quality activities.
Artists who have worked with staff include Gini Hearth (lead artist, arts psychotherapist), Menna Buss (textile community artist), Ami Marsden (sculptor), Sarah Jones (ceramic artist) and Bec Gee (arts facilitator).
In its first year Sharing Hope has also won an SBUHB LOV Award and been a finalist in the HSJ Patient Safety Awards (Best Staff Wellbeing Initiative).
Sharing HOPE's first creative project was a moving video of staff members reciting lines from a poem about what COVID meant to them.
There were also sand sculpture events on local beaches in the summer for staff members and their families and friends, and textile classes.
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