How is creative facilitation being used in work with communities to illuminate lived experiences of health, illness and health inequalities? What can it bring to medical training and education? How can it be used in University research settings to support the development of new partnerships, projects and government structures?
These were some of the questions we considered at ‘Creative Facilitation in Health Research: Insights, Practice and Futures’ last week.
Facilitated by Jonathan Dudding, the event brought together more than 50 academics, creative practitioners, health and voluntary sector professionals for a deep dive into how creative facilitation has been developed and practiced by Mary Robson at the Institute for Medical Humanities (IMH) and taken up in different research and other organisational settings.
Mary set the scene for the session with a presentation exploring her career to date, and the history and development of creative facilitation in interdisciplinary health research and engagement at Durham. You can watch a recording of Mary’s presentation below.
We were then treated to a series of presentations exploring ‘Creative Facilitation in Action’.
All the presenters had attended one of our training courses on creative facilitation or had otherwise been inspired by Mary to bring creative facilitation methods to their work outside IMH:
- Phil Hutchinson, Senior Lecturer in Applied Philosophical Psychology at Manchester Metropolitan University, reflected on his experience of combining techniques drawn from deliberative forum and ICA-UK consensus workshop methods to improve medical education and training.
- Florence Darling from the Gateshead Health Determinants Research Collaboration highlighted what creative facilitation can bring to public health research. She shared how arts-based and creative approaches were used within the HAF-DEFINE project to understand the lived experience of the school holidays for families living on low-incomes.
- Andrew Moss, Research Culture Manager at Durham University, explained the centrality of creative facilitation to the development of Flourish at Durham – Durham University’s research culture vision, values and action framework.
- And finally, Virginia Calabria, a postdoctoral researcher on the Moving Social Work project in Durham’s Department of Sport and Exercise Sciences, shared how techniques drawn from conversational analysis and creative facilitation is informing the development of a tool that supports meaningful conversations and shared decision making around physical activity and well-being between social workers and disabled people.
There was plenty of time for small group discussion in between talks, and reflections on the power of creative facilitation to create equal and inclusive spaces that enable deeply collaborative, participatory and experimental ways of working.
What was clear from the afternoon’s presentations and discussions was that creative facilitation is a practice that is rapidly developing outside the Institute for Medical Humanities in health research, teaching and engagement. We look forward to considering how IMH can further support its development across the UK and globally.
‘Creative Facilitation: Insights, Practice and Futures’ took place on 16 January 2026 at Collingwood College, Durham University.
Thank you to our presenters and all our participants for your time and the gift of conversation!
Find out more
If you’d like to learn more about how creative facilitation has been taken up in different research, community and clinical settings beyond the Institute for Medical Humanities, you can read the written interviews with the individuals below:
- Ericka Johnson and Kristin Zeiler, Centre of for Medical Humanities and Bioethics at Linköping University, Sweden
- Andrew Moss, Research Culture Manager, Durham University
- Florence Darling, Research Lead, Health Determinants Research Collaboration, Gateshead Council
- Thomas Ward, Clinical Psychologist and PI of the AVATAR project, King’s College London.
- Jonathan Coates, GP, St Anthony’s Health Centre, Newcastle upon Tyne.
- Pradeep Narayanan, Praxis Institute for Participatory Practice, India.
We also have a range of resources, including a report on the history and practice of creative facilitation at Durham and a podcast in which participants reflect on the value of our training courses, on the Creative Facilitation Unit website.
