Katherine Taylor

Background

About Katherine Taylor

I’m a British clinical psychologist with a research background. I manage the GM i-THRIVE Arts, Culture & Mental Health Programme across Greater Manchester, and work in NHS Child & Adolescent Mental Health Services in Lancaster and Morecambe. THRIVE is a solution-focussed national framework which seeks to develop a common language not solely defined by health. The Arts, Culture and Mental Health Programme exists to broaden the offer in line with the THRIVE framework (Wolpert et al, 2019). We work with wider system leaders, community health and arts partners to ensure we in GM make use of the evidence surrounding the arts for health and to develop best practice. Implementation of the Arts, Culture and Mental Health programme: My role supports the wider i-THRIVE team’s scope to improve access, broaden the clinical offer, increase patient choice, safety, and support quality. Since March 2019 we have delivered training and support to colleagues on the value and use of the arts, culture and creative mental health support. We have implemented and tested such options in a series of proof of concepts of arts-provision in NHS services, in partnership with Great Place. We have co-produced the GM i-THRIVE Youth Mental Health Evaluation Kit through a unique partnership between stakeholders from clinical, academic, arts and commissioning backgrounds, to provide over 80 organisations across GM a practical, cross-sector method enabling the arts and cultural sector to speak to commissioners. Art Thou Well Art Thou Well is the name of a blog I began to record and reflect on a Churchill Travelling Fellowship in 2017. I applied to WCMT from my research role at Arts for Health at MMU on the Dementia and Imagination AHRC Connected Communities programme, to build on collaborations with colleagues in Finland and the US and help further develop arts and health work in the UK. Research Prior to clinical training (DClinPsy 2010 - 2013), I was employed in mental health research at the University of Manchester and Lancaster University, at the Spectrum Centre for Mental Health Research. My research on bipolar disorders was published in the Journal of Affective Disorders, and explored how people who lived with extremes of mood managed it through creative activities, and in another paper, the under-researched positive aspects of bipolar disorder.