Creative Approaches

Doing the Work, Together.

This is where story meets action.

Every project has been shaped in conversation with community members, artists, health care workers, researchers. Together, we design creative responses to health inequities that are rooted in real lives, real needs, and shared imagination. These aren’t quick fixes but acts of care, resistance, and collective healing.

Our Focus Areas

1. What’s Your Story? - Catalysing change through storytelling

What’s Your Story? is a creative programme where participants have shared and developed their stories in a supportive group setting. As part of ReCITE, Writing on the Wall has been running three blocks of “What’s Your Story?” workshops over six weeks in Liverpool (Toxteth), Sefton (Bootle), and Knowsley (Kirkby). Working with professional writers and creatives, the groups are developing their stories of health inequalities and transformed them into pieces of creative writing. These stories will be shared at learning events to which health care and other relevant professionals will be invited.

‘This course has quite literally changed my life. It has been one of the best things I have ever done and to think that I found it by accident makes me think that it must have been meant to be. I was at an extremely low point in my life when I found this course and I was terrified. However, the course changed all that. The tutors and the staff who run the course have been so personable and welcoming, inspiring, and encouraging that for the first time ever I have started to believe that my voice is important and has value. I have developed the confidence to speak in front of people and to show words that had been hidden away for many years. This course is invaluable and priceless.’
– What’s Your Story? Participant

2. Community Innovation Teams (CITs) - Community-led approaches for change

At the heart of our approach are Community Innovation Teams (CITs) which work at the interface between communities and primary healthcare. These teams bring together community members, community organizations, health professionals, and creatives to address health inequity through the medium of storytelling in its many forms.

CITs use a tested approach, they analyse local service data combined with community insights, and co-develop, deliver, and mentor local solutions for health prevention and uptake. This helps teams to address entrenched local health equity challenges.

Our CITs are based in Knowsley, Liverpool, and Sefton and are working on immunisation, cancer screening, and mental and social wellbeing.

Community-led, creative health solutions

Related Blog: CIT Updates

Creative Health Exchanges - Strengthening the Creative Health Ecosystem

The Creative Health Exchange is a core intervention activity for the ReCITE programme, led by Writing on the Wall. These events connect creatives, community organisations and health providers with the overall aim of sparking new ideas and thinking with renewed energy to tackle widening inequities in preventive and promotive health and social and mental wellbeing.

The iconic Liverpool Lighthouse in the heart of Anfield was buzzing with life during the first-ever Creative Health Exchange in the Liverpool City Region.

Impressions from the Creative Health Exchange in Liverpool.