The Unmasking Pain (UP), the Fuse Health Award winner for Innovative and Creative Communications, emerged and was led by Balbir Singh, Director of Balbir Singh Dance Company, to enable the person with pain through the creative arts process to unlock themselves from the fear, anger, depression, physical limitations and lack of social and creative engagement. This project was conceived to enable people discover themselves and build self-confidence in their differing self-identity and health.
UP was a brave and bold engagement in persistent pain, a well-known yet neglected and avoided area of human experience.
The Unmasking Pain Report can be read here - UP Report
A Summary Report can be read here - UP Report - Summary
The UP project tackled diverse ways to explore pain with a non-judgemental and curious approach to engage those with pain with a rich mixture of creative arts. The plan now is to continue the development of Unmasking Pain with original partners: Balbir Singh Dance Company; Live Well With Pain; Durham University WRIHW Pain Challenge Academy and Leeds Beckett University Centre for Pain Research, together with pain communities predominantly in County Durham. Other locations may include Kirklees, Leeds, North Tyneside and Cumbria.
The next phase of the collaboration is to co-design Creative Footsteps, developing the Live Well With Pain and the Pain Challenge academy’s AHSN Bright ideas in Health award winning Ten Footsteps programme, a step-by-step online and f2f training guide to living well despite your persistent pain; working with people living with persistent pain through regular sessions in Durham (Parkinsons, Fibromyalgia, Dementia participants) to take creative approaches to explore and develop Creative Footsteps; their clinicians and pain management specialists and researchers at Durham University WRIHW.
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