Join the Healthy Happy Places team and guest speakers for our next webinar looking at how we can collaboratively create our spaces through a trauma informed lens. Places can be hostile and unwelcoming, negatively impacting our wellbeing and mental health, but we can work to promote healing and recovery. Through inputting unique designs and ideas which reinforce feelings of safety, rather than isolation and danger, learn how we can co-create inclusive and calming spaces for everyone.

“Trauma-informed practice is an approach to health and care interventions which is grounded in the understanding that trauma exposure can impact an individual’s neurological, biological, psychological and social development.” (Working definition of trauma-informed practice, Office for Health Improvement and Health Disparities, 2022)

We will be joined by

• Dr Angela Kennedy, Head of Specialist Psychological Therapies and Expert in Trauma Informed Care, NHS-E Lead for Trauma Informed Community of Action. Working with the manifestations of trauma and dissociation. Cumbria, Northumberland Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation Trust.

The Impact of Trauma: Defining what trauma means and examining the impact on us, our neurobiology, our attachment and our communities.

• Catherine Cartwright, Artist and PhD Candidate in trauma-informed artist practice. Catherine Cartwright is an artist, primarily using printmaking, drawing and collage, sometimes working with animation and artist books. She is currently undertaking a PhD, learning how to be a researcher, and taking a deep dive into ‘trauma-informed’ artist practice and based in Exeter.

Trauma-informed Community Arts Practice: Community artists often work outside the studio and in settings with individuals and/or communities who maybe affected by trauma. Different to art therapists who are trained in the psychotherapeutic discipline, community art aims to be an empowering and inclusive practice driven by the art making, rather than a psychotherapeutic lens. In this talk I will discuss the research I have been doing; interviewing artists about their community practices and running collage-art projects with service users at Devon Rape Crisis and Sexual Abuse Services.

• Dr Cara Courageauthor of Creative Placemaking: Research, Theory and Practice (2019) and leading the Trauma Informed Placemaking project, based in Brighton/ Dublin.

Call to Action: what a trauma-informed placemaking means in practice Cara advocates for a trauma-informed awareness in placemaking practice and will talk through some examples of place-based projects that deal with sites and issues of trauma, as well as its healing, and signal to the sector’s future by asking of the principles through which placemakers work.

Dr Cara Courage is a globally renowned placemaking leader, independent culture place researcher, prodigious cultural and creative sector consultant-director and creative and organisational change agent, named in the top 10 of place-thinkers worldwide and a ‘strategy angel’ for the arts sector. Her most recent project is ‘Trauma-Informed Placemaking’, with Dr Anita McKeown, a research platform and forthcoming textbook (Routledge, 2023). Cara undertakes reach for her own projects and for academy and sector-commissioned partners in the USA, Australia, and across the UK, for national arts networks, cultural institutions and local and central government; and speaks internationally on topics covering arts and place, placemaking, C21st museum and socially engaged art, amongst others. Cara is Editor and Convenor of The Routledge Handbook of Placemaking (Routledge, 2021); Co-Editor of Creative Placemaking and Beyond (Routledge, 2018); and author of Arts in Place: The Arts, the Urban and Social Practice (Routledge, 2017).

• Shopworks Architecture, Denver, Colorado. Chad Holtzinger, AIA and Dr. Jennifer Wilson, Shopworks Architecture was formed in 2012 by Chad Holtzinger. The primary focus of the firm is urban infill development with a particular interest in affordable housing, transit oriented and mixed-use development and community-oriented projects. Chad has practiced architecture for more than 20 years and has been licensed in Colorado since 2001. His career has revolved primarily around affordable housing design and mixed-use development in the City of Denver. His unique multidisciplinary approach to design results in innovative, high performing, enduring architecture. Dr. Jennifer Wilson brings to Shopworks over 15 years of social work experience in direct practice, program management, research and evaluation, training, and teaching. As a researcher and social scientist, her work focuses on social innovations and interdisciplinary collaboration that address social inequity, with specific attention to the experience of homelessness and housing precarity. She possesses expertise working with community partners and in community- based settings seeking to advance the development, testing, and dissemination of evidence-based practices.

A Trauma-Informed Design Framework & Case Studies : Drawing on our inter-disciplinary research in Trauma Informed Design, this session will focus on how the built environment plays an important role in the mental health of those who interact with it. Join Chad H. Holtzinger, AIA and Dr. Jennifer Wilson for a presentation on our trauma-informed design framework that has been informed by conversations with over 1,500 across the United States. Additionally, see how these values are put into practice in the built design with and overview of our four-phase TID process and examples of Shopworks Architecture’s TID buildings. See more information at http://www.shopworksarc.com/tid

Come along to find out more on how we can collectively shape the environment around us to have a beneficial impact on mental health.

15:00-15:30 ‘A Space for Conversation’ [OPTIONAL SESSION] – Something new we are trying out….. Following the webinar, Angela Kennedy and the Healthy Happy Places team will stay on the call and be available for an additional half an hour where you can join us for a cuppa and chat. This is to provide an opportunity to share thoughts and any further questions related to the webinar content. Not mandatory but everyone welcome!

Who is it for? Anyone with an interest in this topic is welcome to attend. NHS staff, public health, planners and architects, designers, Elected Members and third sector community groups may be particularly interested in hearing about different perspectives and approaches to trauma informed placemaking and designing and planning places of sanctuary.

Why attend? If you are curious about how built environment professionals and health and public health expertise can come together to think about how we can use trauma informed approaches in designing places of sanctuary that have a positive impact on mental health and wellbeing.

Join the conversation: #HealthyHappyPlaces

The event will be held on MS Teams. Please check that you can access Teams prior to the event. Joining information will be circulated in the run up to the event.