Working for the NHS was miserable so I started dance classes on my ward

Things are not going well in the NHS right now. It is under sustained attack day after day; the media bad-mouths it, while the people who work for it are being asked to do more and more with fewer and fewer resources.

In my 15 years of study and training, I have watched cuts immiserate the services we can offer children and their parents all over the country. Fewer funded paediatric nurse training spots; local closures leading to clogged emergency departments; and £80bn slashed from mental health services resulting in ever more troubled young people occupying acute hospital beds, because there’s simply nowhere else for them to go.

Working in a health service under pressure – one that is low in finances, low in staff and low in morale – is hard. And things are only going to get worse. The current political climate actively pits health workers and patients against each other, the opposite of what caring relationships are supposed to look like. Under this kind of pressure, it’s not only the patients who need healing, it’s also the staff.

I felt this myself. I would see my colleagues, hungry and thirsty from lack of breaks with circles under their eyes, struggle to do their jobs. Being in hospital can be scary and alienating for sick children at the best of times – how much worse when the staff looking after them are too tired and busy even to smile?

I decided to do something about it. Barnet Bopping is a pilot project I developed with colleagues that brings dance to the paediatric ward of Barnet hospital, in north London. The aim is to help patients, parents and staff feel happier, healthier, less stressed and more connected by doing physical activity together that’s mood lifting and fun.

One morning, we gathered some of the kids and staff in the playroom and I asked a friend – who happens to be a nurse on the ward – to lead a hip-hop dance class. At first it felt a bit awkward; here we were, in the middle of the working day, my colleagues and I, swaying our hips with the consultant. And in front of the parents. But with every new move, and with every song, we all got more and more into it. Before long we forgot who we were, and even where we were. It didn’t matter whether we were a doctor, nurse, patient, parent or cleaner – all that mattered was the music. By the end, the atmosphere on the ward was really, well, happy.

I noticed how things changed after that. The boundaries between the nurses and doctors were gone. People smiled more. The team communicated better. It made us all wonder why we didn’t do things like that more often.

On its own this will not fix the NHS. But it is a way for us, in our local general hospital, to take matters back into our own hands, to resist the destruction of our health service and try to offer the best care we can to our patients.

Wellbeing should be for all of us. Health workers operate under huge stress, all while feeling as if we aren’t really doing justice to our patients. We need take care of each other – health workers and patients alike. Whether it’s standing up for patient safety or being creative at work, we stand with our patients. Cuts or no cuts, this is the kind of spirit that hasn’t yet been crushed in the NHS.

If you would like to contribute to our Blood, sweat and tears series which is about memorable moments in a healthcare career, please read our guidelines and get in touch by emailing sarah.johnson@theguardian.com.

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Working for the NHS was miserable so I started dance classes on my ward

Express yourself: how a charity is using dance to improve mental health

Ten young people from Manchester mental health charity 42nd Street are struggling to spin their legs round their bodies while keeping their hands anchored to the studio floor as they’ve been shown. Instructor Kevin Turner stops them and explodes into his own demonstration of high-speed repetitions of the sequence, while they watch in astonishment.

“Look, my legs are all over the place,” Turner pants mid dance. “They are going like crazy. When I was ill, I often felt that things were happening that were out of my control. Can anyone else relate to that?”

Turner, 34, sits down, perspiring, among the group of young people aged 16 to 25. Several hands go up hesitantly, and a young woman quietly says, “I can”.

Turner founded Manchester-based Company Chameleon in 2007 with his friend Anthony Missen. Their was aim to make hard-hitting contemporary dance exploring the reality of being male in greater Manchester. Turner has bipolar disorder, as does at least one of the youngsters in this workshop, and he has told them his diagnosis.

Kevin Turner’s workshops help young people to use dance to explore their mental health problems.

Three years ago, Turner was sectioned and spent more than a month in hospital and almost a year working his way back to the physical and mental health he needs to perform.

He wants the young people he’s teaching today to see that they can use dance to explore their own mental health problems, and the impact on the people around them. Most of them have never danced before, but 42nd Street is convinced that dance can help build trust and confidence, without the need for words.

Turner’s latest work, Witness, performed by Company Chameleon’s five dancers, portrays his own experiences of his breakdown and the perspective of his friends and family. It is premiering at Plymouth University on 19 October, and touring until the end of November. Each performance will be supplemented by a workshop with schools, colleges and youth groups.

Sitting in his baggy trousers and T-shirt, this “lad” from Stretford, is clearly in control of himself and is a powerful image of hope for the young people he teaches. His demonstration was not some kind of ego trip, but to help them tap into the shared emotions of breakdown and give them the confidence to use their bodies to tell their own stories. They start by using exercises, sections from Witness and their own moves.

Turner and mental health charity 42nd Street believe dance can build trust and confidence.

“Where dance is different from simply doing exercise – which of course makes you feel good because of the endorphins – is that it helps you to use the physical to experience your internal world,” says Turner.

He believes his own mental health problems started when he was a teenager, but he did not recognise depression and tried to ignore it until it was no longer possible.

Dancing helped him handle the pain of his parents’ divorce from the age of eight, when he became a member of the Trafford Youth Dance Theatre. He argues that young people need to be aware of how creative movement can support good mental health.

There is nothing fluffy about this. Dance work like this should be recognised as a pre-crisis intervention

Simone Spray

Recent figures suggest that last year, nearly a quarter of a million children and young people were in contact with mental health services for issues such as anxiety, depression and eating disorders. But research also shows that 28% of children referred for support in England – including some who had attempted suicide – received no help in 2015.

The number of referrals to 42nd Street is high. The charity, which has been running for almost four decades, is commissioned by the NHS to provide mental health support, including counselling, to young people across Manchester. However, advisers are having to tell suicidal young people they will have to wait more than four months for one-to-one support.

“It’s not something we are happy about,” says chief executive Simone Spray. She also worries about the short length of therapy, when it does happen, leaving young people without support before they are properly well. The charity’s solution is to invest heavily in the arts – including the new Horsfall Centre for performance, opening in December – to give young people what Spray calls “wrap-around support”.

Spray says: “There is nothing fluffy about this. Dance work like this should be recognised as a pre-crisis intervention, because it has such a positive impact on some young people.” In her view, it can prevent them needing to access therapy at all, or at least keep them feeling better until more formal help is available.

The young people in Turner’s workshop seem relaxed and focused. Kelly (not her real name) has bipolar disorder and was initially afraid she would not be able to do the exercises, but now she is beaming and keen to continue. “This has really drawn me in. At first I thought OMG! But now I’d like to do it again. People see bipolar as a joke, but Kevin has shared what happened to him and it’s helped us express the way we feel.”

• In the UK, the Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Hotline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is on 13 11 14. Hotlines in other countries can be found here.

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Express yourself: how a charity is using dance to improve mental health

Interview with Lucy Bennett, artistic director, Stopgap Dance Company | Arts head

Lucy Bennett is artistic director of Stopgap Dance Organization. Photograph: Stopgap Dance Business

Hi Lucy, what can you tell me about Stopgap Dance Company?

Stopgap Dance Firm helps make evocative dance productions with exceptional disabled and non-disabled artists. We nurture and operate with expressive artists who have sturdy personalities and stories to tell. When they get with each other to devise authentic operates, the end result has a genuine emotional punch, which pushes you to look at the globe in a diverse way.

A sense of pioneering spirit and collaboration are really important in our company and we are continually creating discoveries about what kind of productions disabled and non-disabled artists can make. Some of our dancers have been doing work with each other for more than a decade and have large experience in integrated dance. We just lately stepped away from currently being a repertoire organization so that we can actually search at our own choreographic practice in detail and make our distinct artistic voice heard.

What are the implications of integrated dance and how do you approach it as artistic director?

Integrated dance for us is about finding new and unusual dance vocabularies. We use our various physicalities, experiences and studying styles to discover innovative and different methods of expression and motion. We typically convey this by saying: “distinction is our implies and our strategy.”

The approach of innovation at times reveals exciting social dynamics inside of the crew, and I consider to find ways to knit these into the production. Now that we are producing our own perform, we can use our creation approach to reconstruct some established tips about integrated dance – our new perform Artificial Things is total of new and uncommon dance sequences that came from looking at things in a lot more detail.

I think we have gone a small bit additional in questioning the normal shapes and accepted principles of dance. By taking complete control of the inventive approach, a much deeper exploration was achievable. I’m lucky to have a collective of dancers who are inquisitive.

Does this variety of integrated perform present any issues?

We want longer creation periods than most other businesses since we are doing work with various bodies and varying paces of learning. The diversity does make creation of new materials a lot more complicated. Even when we locate new tips, it requires longer to uncover consistency with a varied cast simply because there are so several overall performance variables for wheelchair or learning disabled dancers, but experience has taught us that the material ultimately will tighten with practice.

It truly is frequently tough for new business dancers to adjust to our tempo, so we seek out people who could get utilized to it. But this slower pace and mishaps are not all unfavorable it can motivate a supportive surroundings, which assists to build a great team spirit. The dancers realise they want each and every other to do what they do, and their co-dependence is quite much reflected in our work.

Dance is frequently noticed as a really image and entire body-led artform – how much is integrated dance demanding that?

Dancers like Dave Toole, who had a starring role in the London 2012 Paralympic Games Opening Ceremony, had a large affect in modifying standard suggestions about who can dance. London 2012 raised so significantly awareness of inclusive and integrated functionality. It was quite emotional seeing so a lot of wonderful disabled and non-disabled performers putting on such an amazing spectacle.

Where we need to have to make far better progress is how we involve understanding disabled artists and recognise the contribution they can make. Chris Pavia, who has been operating with Stopgap for 15 many years, devised one particular of my central characters in Artificial Factors by means of a direct dialogue with me. His raw imagination and the potential to be “in the second” is fascinating and I hope that his performance will change perceptions about finding out disabled artists.

What makes for a good artistic director in dance?

For me it really is about the big and little. You have to come up with the big vision, but you also have to be on hand with the tiny concepts that can fix the everyday issues. I have constantly admired artistic directors who are speaking at a conference one particular minute but are pleased to make tea for their colleagues the subsequent. It really is healthier to see factors from various perspectives and be adaptive to circumstances. As artistic director, I practice generating myself large when I require to be heard, and small when I want to quietly observe.

With no what could you not do your task?

A tea break with my dancers. That’s where I get some of my best tips.

Lucy Bennett is artistic director of Stopgap Dance Firm – adhere to the business on Twitter @Stopgapdance

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Interview with Lucy Bennett, artistic director, Stopgap Dance Company | Arts head