[LAUIL601] Primary Research - Case Study: Catrin Morgan

Lovely to hear from you. I'm sorry to be so slow to reply! The last few weeks have been very busy at Parsons.

Here are my answers to your questions. I hope I'm not too late to be useful! Let me know if you have any further questions.

Best wishes,

Cat

• Do you feel your anxiety / mental health is positively impacted because of being creative?

The relationship between my mental health and my creativity is quite complicated. Sometimes making work feels

like something that is very good for my wellbeing but at other times I can become quite anxious about making work and when I\"m depressed I often make terrible work or no work at all. As I get older I\"ve realised that it depends a little bit where I am and what kind of care I\"m taking of myself. I need to have a stable home life both to be mentally well and for my creativity to flourish. 

• If so, why do you think this is?

Having said all of that, when my creativity is helping my mental space it is because it is giving me a quiet space to go to. Creativity can be very grounding. It\"s usually when work needs to find an audience that it becomes stressful.

• Could you tell me a little bit more about the art therapy sessions at parsons that you mentioned in your visiting lecture?

These are not art therapy sessions but a class that I ran last year which aimed to look at how illustrators might be uniquely placed to communicate mental health narratives.

• What do the sessions aim to do?

We explored writing and thinking around mental health and the students pursued self directed projects looking at mental health narratives that particularly interested them or were personal to them. They produced some really interesting and impactful work.

• Have you noticed that they have had a positive impact on the students? If so, why do you think this is?

It\"s very hard to say. I think that some students found the class quite difficult. We were talking about some very heavy subjects and this in itself can become a point for anxiety. Other students certainly found the space that they were given helpful.

• Are there any particular case studies that you can think of where these sessions have been a tremendous benefit to a particular student?

Hmmm.. not possible to say.

Reflection:

I find these answers provide another viewpoint in the argument, that there isn't always a positive correlation between art and mental well-being especially when we feel the need to perform for an audience. This could give an engaging read in my dissertation rather than 2 or 3 positive case studies.