Making the Invisible Visible is a recent collaborative project between Dr Wladzia Czuber-Dochan at the Department of Adult Nursing at Kings College London and Artist Ali Winstanley, a specialist in Arts and Medicine, and aimed to explore and depict fatigue in IBD using the arts.

In Dr Czuber-Dochan’s PhD exploring fatigue in IBD and its impact on people’s lives, she found fatigue presented as invisible and study participants felt imprisoned in their unreliable body. Through a collaborative process with the artist an idea was formed to create illustrated flashcards expressing fatigue, transforming it into something visible and tangible through the use of the arts.

The team co-facilitated a co-design workshop with people affected by IBD and fatigue where they were encouraged to use arts materials to express their experiences. The artist then used these outputs to inform the creation of hand painted collages depicting different physical and emotional experiences of fatigue. The artworks were then made into flashcards which the team plan to embed in clinics and to be made available to help patients talk about fatigue to others.

Wladzia and Ali have so far received very positive feedback from patients, academics and international organisations and are currently preparing a research paper on the project. They are keen to share the project with international networks and are very open to further collaborations exploring experiences of IBD using the arts.

For any enquiries or for further information please contact aliwinstanley@gmail.com or wladzia.czuber-dochan@kings.ac.uk

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And here are our weblinks:

Project page here

Artist website: Aliwinstanley.com

Twitter: @wellbeingengage

Instagram: @kuriosas_aliwinstanley