Voices of Lived Experience
Creative Focus Groups
We facilitated creative focus groups with women with lived experience of addiction/recovery and care proceedings. We used collaborative making methods to stimulate conversation, inviting women to engage with our large textile-based ‘care proceedings map’, which outlined five key stages of the formal care proceedings process: pre-referral, assessment, pre-proceedings, proceedings and post-proceedings. Participants were invited to speak or add textiles materials onto the map. We added notes to document conversations as they unfolded, and took photos of the finished ‘maps’.
Overview
Craft Programme
We facilitated an extended craft programme with residents of a specialist accommodation project to gain deeper insight into women’s experiences. The accommodation projects supports women struggling with addiction and at risk of, or involved with, children’s services intervention. The project also accommodates their children. The programme ran once a week for 2 hours. During the sessions, residents made personal recovery ‘banners’, using a range of textiles techniques and materials to create a personalised wall-hanging celebrating their journeys through motherhood and recovery. We used different textiles techniques and approaches to stimulate conversation around women’s experiences of living at the project.
Overview
