ALI WINSTANLEY

With a background in Psychology, I have always been interested in the role the arts can play in health, wellbeing and exploring the mind-body connection.

After working as an arts and wellbeing facilitator in community and clinical settings since 2012, in 2016 I moved into collaborations with scientists and health academics at institutions such as King’s College London and UCL.

I have a particular interest in how the arts can help people express experiences of chronic ‘invisible’ conditions and how character illustration and storytelling can build resilience in children.

My academic projects include:

My Memory Forest - a children’s book I created alongside psychologists at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience at Kings College London to help boost resilient thinking in 6-8 year olds. This was a research trial with a follow-up further funded by the British Council with very positive results around child wellbeing.

Making the Invisible Visible: Fatigue in IBD - with Florence Nightingale School of Nursing and Midwifery at King’s College London, working with patients with inflammatory bowel disease to explore the role of the arts in expressing experiences of fatigue through running creative workshops and creating illustrated flashcards for use in clinical practice.

Skyscape - a project with nursing staff at King’s College London, exploring the impact of photographing the sky on staff and student wellbeing where I was involved in running workshops and curating online platforms.

In 2023, I currently act as an Arts and Health specialist and consultant, running workshops, courses and seminars about the arts and health, creative approaches to medicine and public engagement with research for data scientists, researchers, medical students and clinicians at the Wellcome Centre for Interventional and Surgical Sciences (WEISS) at UCL, Queen Mary University London and Brighton and Sussex Medical School

In 2023 I have received an Arts Council Developing Your Creative Practice grant to develop a children’s mental health resource. My aim is to develop a further illustrated publication to address the current mental health crisis for children and young people,and I am currently in the scopng stage for this with a number of primary schools in East Sussex and East London.

My ten years as an Arts and Health facilitator involved designing and delivering arts and wellbeing projects in clinical settings such as Great Ormond Street Hospital and Homerton Hospital Neurorehabiltation Unit with people with acquired brain injuries, as well with adults, children aand families in a range of educational and social care settings such as learning disability day centres, schools in areas of deprivation, dementia care homes and community centres in the UK and Finland.

During the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 I also ran Zoom Arts and Wellbeing sessions for vulnerable adults in Brighton - more here.

I am always excited to hear about new opportunities or collaborations in this area, please contact me: aliwinstanley@gmail.com

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Arts and Health clients and collaborators:

Kings College London, Great Ormond Street Hospital, The Institute of Psychiatry Psychology and Neuroscience, Royal Society of Medicine, Florence Nightingale School of Nursing and Midwifery, Brighton and Sussex Medical School, Wellcome Centre for Interventional and Surgical Sciences, Centre for Primary Care and Public Health at Queen Mary University, Youth Resilience Unit at Queen Mary University London, Maudsley Learning, Neurorehabilitation Unit at Homerton Hospital, Westminster Arts, Trust Thamesmead, Kings College Arts in Mind Festival, Grace Eyre, Kids Company, Helsinki Night of the Arts Festival.

Illustrator and Artistic Co-Lead on acclaimed children’s mental health book ‘My Memory Forest’ aimed at boosting resilient thinking in children and teaching them to integrate negative memories.

With support from the Cultural Institute at Kings College London, in 2017 I worked alongside research psychologists Dr Jennifer Lau and Dr Victoria Pile at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience on the concept and illustration of this children’s mental health intervention that was later piloted with 6-9 yer olds.

Feedback from key mental health professionals on My Memory Forest:

“Your work looks wonderful. What a great resource for children and families!” - Dr Rick Hanson, Psychologist and Senior Fellow at UC Berkeley

“Thank you so much for sending me your beautiful book, My Memory Forest. What a wonderful project” - Dr Paul Gilbert, Clinical Psychologist & Founder of Compassion Focused Therapy

The initial pilot with school children and their parents in London showed encouraging early results, and in 2018 the project received further funding from the British Council to create an updated version of the book. This further trial also yielded positive results around mood and wellbeing.

In June 2018 we were invited to run family workshops focused on book at the Arts in Mind Festival in Camberwell. We also presented the project at a translational research seminar for researchers at the Centre for Primary Care and Public Health at Queen Mary University London in July 2018.

The publication and project received widespread acclaim and positive feedback from a number of mental health professionals and charities.

The project is now written up into a research paper: Targeting image-based autobiographical memory in childhood to prevent emotional disorders: Intervention development and a feasibility randomised controlled trial. This was published in the Behaviour Research and Therapy Journal 2022.

Kings College links to the project here

Please email me with any queries about the project, or for information about how to obtain a copy of the book:

aliwinstanley@gmail.com

In 2018 and 2019 I worked alongside Dr Wladzia Czuber-Dochan at the Florence Nightingale School of Nursing and Midwifery, Kings College London as a Cultural Lead on the project ‘Making the Invisible Visible: Fatigue in IBD’ supported by the Cultural Institute at Kings.

The project had the aim of exploring and ‘making visible’ the often hidden experiences of fatigue in people with Inflammatory Bowel Disease such as Crohns and Colitis.  

I co-facilitated a workshop with patients from around the UK discussing their experiences of fatigue and IBD and introduced arts activities including collage, drawing and sculpture for participants to depict their physical and psychological symptoms.

Drawing on these outputs, I produced ten illustrated flashcards inspired by the workshop. These were exhibited at Bush House, Kings College on The Strand in February 2019 and will be used in clinical practice with patients to help them express their symptoms to their loved ones and clinicians.

The patient participants had ongoing input into the creative process and reported positive experiences of their involvement. The project received acclaim from Crohns and Colitis UK as well as positive coverage from IBD organisations in the USA, New Zealand, Poland and Norway as part of world IBD Day in May 2019. Myself and Wladzia were also invited to write an article for the European Federation of Crohns and Colitis Associations (EFCAA) publication in October 2019.

Both Wladzia and myself are keen for the project to help as many people as possible. The flashcards can be provided as a PDF to be printed and used as patient resources and in clinical practice - if you would like to be sent this or any further information about the project, please contact: aliwinstanley@gmail.com or wladzia.czuber-dochan@kcl.ac.uk

We are also very interested in disseminating the project further through talks or written articles, and are open to further arts and health collaborations in the area of inflammatory bowel diseases - please contact us to talk further.

My character illustration work is inspired by Scandinavian folklore and landscapes, Japanese character culture, deep sea monsters, 1970’s psychedelic animations, Eastern european illustration, Jungian psychology, dreams, nightmares and subconscious wanderings.

I incorporate these characters into installations and have also created illustrated publications My Memory Forest and Trypophobia.

In 2023 I have received Arts Council funding to create a further illustrated mental health resource for children, and am currently in the scopng stage for this at schools in East Sussex and East London.

Please contact me if you would like to know more about my character illustration work: aliwinstanley@gmail.com

I have almost ten years experience of working with academics and leading higher education institutions to design and deliver creative and engaging co-design workshops for patient groups, researchers, clinicians and scientists to understand each other and create collabrative outputs that can be used to enrich public engagement with research and patient experiences.

I fuse my creative abilities, empathic communication skills developed from my extensive experience in therapeutic roles, training in counselling, psychology and group facilitation with my passion and curiosity for inclusive research that improves people’s health and wellbeing. This enables me to design sensitive and bespoke sessions where both patients and academics feel safe and understood, allowing insightful discussion and creative outputs to emerge.

What I can offer:

Creation of co-design workshops for academics, clinicians and patient groups to facilitate disalogue, foster collaborations and enrich research

Design and facilitation of creative patient and public engagement workshops and focus groups with specific health conditions, especially ‘invisible’ physical illnesses and neurodivergence.

Developing workshops for scientists, early career researchers and academics in creative thinking skills and finding ways to engage the public in their research

Creating engaging teaching and training sessions for clinicians and trainee healthcare professionals in using creative methods to develop empathy, facilitate patient storytelling and to enhance their own wellbeing.

Design and facilitation of co-design workshops for adults with lived experience of neurodivergence, particularly autism which I have extensive experience of.

Some examples of my projects include:

Designing and delivering a series of online workshops alongside scientists from Wellcome |nsitute for Interventional and Surgical Sciences at UCL and the University of Oxford with bowel cancer patients to explore their perceptions of A.I being used in cancer treatment and diagnosis.

Creating and facilitating a co-design workshop for 8-11 year olds in Newham, East London to explore mental health and resilience and help design a new logo for the Youth Resilience Unit at Queen Mary’s University London

Working alongside nursing academics at Florence Nighingale School of Nursing and Midwifery at King’s College London to design and facilitate a workshop for patient with inflammatory bowel disease to explore their symptoms of fatigue using the arts, with these designs then being incorporated into flash cards to be used in clinical practice

Testimonials:

Ali is fantastic at networks, bringing people together, working in a cross-disciplinary way, producing innovative events and workshops 

Patrick Vernon OBE, Social Commentator, campaigner and cultural historian.

Ali Winstanley was a fantastic facilitator.  At the height of the Covid 19 pandemic she ably managed a series of online arts mediated engagement sessions with patients and our researchers, allowing all to share and learn form each other in a stimulating and open environment.

Simon Watt, Public Engagement Manager, Wellcome Institute for Interventional and Surgical Sciences, UCL

"One of the most inspiring things I've attended in a very long time"

Professor Harm van Marwijk, Professor in General Practice and Head of Primary Care and Public Health, Brighton and Sussex Medical School 

Ali developed engaging activities that really boosted the self confidence of the participants. She was an excellent facilitator and allowed participants to realise their full potential through the medium of mark-making, drawing and sketching.

In planning the sessions it was easy to collaborate and expand ideas with Ali as she understood the aims for the public workshop and she was great at communicating her creative ideas.I would really like to work with Ali again as the creative process was stimulating and the end results were impactful. Ali took participants in the research project on a creative journey that they all said was worthwhile and satisfying. 

Kathryn Stanley, PCIE Officer, Applied research Collabrative (ARC) and Brighton and Sussex Medical School

Ali was part of a diverse team of five and was able to fit in with the team right away and work in an agile fashion, either leading group work or providing support as needed.   After initial discussions about workshop design, Ali was brimming with creative ideas and continued to think flexibly and creatively to put together an incredible workshop plan that was very structured. Ali engaged very well with client group, many of whom commented that they were excited to attend more workshops delivered by Ali. 

Caitlin Aspinall, Youth Resilience Unit, Queen Mary's University London

"What a great lunchtime workshop! I left feeling inspired and with the creative juices flowing!"

Sophie Branscombe, Innovation Manager, King's Culture, King's College London

From May 2020 during the Covid-19 pandemic I ran a series of online Arts and Wellbeing Zoom sessions for vulnerable adults in Brighton through Wellsbourne Healthcare CIC and Brighton Migrant Centre, funded by the National Lottery Community fund. Sessions lasted 1.5 hours long and participants used paint, pencils, plasticine and online tools to create imagery exploring a specific colour in each session, with discussions around positive associations and memories connected to them.

If you are elsewhere in the UK and are interested in online arts and wellbeing sessions on a one to one or group basis please contact me for more info: aliwinstanley@gmail.com

In 2017 I created a Limited Edition miniature book Trypophobia with Hastings based publisher Micro Library books, the first in their ‘Featured Artist’ series.

Trypophobia is a proposed phobia of irregular patterns or clusters of small holes or bumps

The book is handmade, concertina-folded containing 12 full colour illustrations

£7

Please email aliwinstanley@gmail.com to stock or purchase.

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TRYPOPHOBIA

LIMITED EDITION OF 50

12 CONCERTINA PAGES

DIMENSIONS: 35 X 50 X 8MM

PEA GREEN RAYON COVER

I am an experienced photographer of people, with 18 years experience profiling hundreds of individuals on the streets and at events around the UK, Europe and Japan.

My portraits have also been used to champion positive ageing and cultural diversity by a range of people such as The Guardian Weekend, The School of Life, Royal College of Art, Royal Society of Medicine, Visit Finland, Institute of Longevity, Age Culture Humanities Journal and European Network of Ageing studies. One of my portraits was also used in the Pan Macmillan book ‘How to Age’ by Anne Karpf.

In 2020 and 2021 I also photographed and interviewed individuals over 50 for the Centre for Ageing Better #AgeProud campaign

I originally worked from 2005 to 2015 as a fashion photographer on the streets around the UK and Europe working with publications and clients such as The Guardian, The Telegraph, The i newspaper, Vogue, Elle, Grazia, Glamour, Nylon Japan, WGSN, and Virgin Airlines documenting poeple at events such as London Fashion Week, Ascot and London Olympics 2012.

I am also a trained Oral History Interviewer and regularly interview my subjects about their lives.

I am always open to commissions in this area. Please contact me for more information: aliwinstanley@gmail.com

I create cut-outs, collages and paintings and often collaborate with other artists to transform small spaces using colour, shape and pattern.

I have exhibited in the UK, Berlin and Finland and sometimes collaborate with painter Rachael Macarthur.

I am always interested in opportunities to create installations and exhibitions in venues in the UK, Europe and beyond: aliwinstanley@gmail.com

I have an extensive archive of images from travel around Japan, Ukraine, Romania, Poland, the Baltic states and Scandinavia.

I like to capture beguiling colours and textures from forgotten times, evocative spaces and intriguing tableaux.

Since 2009 I have curated an archive of 20th century book design Kuriosas celebrating the illustration, architecture and graphics I have come across on my travels to Eastern Europe, Scandinavia and around Europe, time living in Berlin and experience as an antiques and vintage collectables trader.

I also interview international artists, feature trips to obscure places and muse over 20th century visual culture. Kuriosas has been featured by GRAD gallery specialising in Russian culture in London as well as Brain Pickings in the US, as well as attracting positive feedback from arts academics, collectors, illustrators and comedy writers.

Visit here: www.kuriosas.com