Our journey working with Mental Fight Club: the use of alternative research methods to gather learnings around mental health
As researchers, we work to appropriately choose learning and evaluation methodologies that are not only evidence based but participatory in nature. Working with the charity Mental Fight Club enabled us to scope and seek new ways of insight gathering beyond the traditional means that are so readily available within evaluation.
Mental Fight Club is a charity that holds mental-health-accessible art events, imaginative and exploratory, for the benefit of its patrons who are either experiencing or experienced mental ill health. All events are free and open to all, across all intersectionalities. In 2019, the Wellcome Trust part-funded a series of projects run by the charity. These projects aimed to strengthen the work the charity had been doing over the last 10 years, with a specific focus on empowering its artists, through a series of longer term commissions, to lead creative public engagement programmes.
We were commissioned, in keeping with the charity’s commitment to non-extractive methodologies, to conduct a non-traditional impact evaluation of their work to assess the ways in which the charity is making a difference to its patrons and the community.
Our Approach:
We began with a set of key evaluation questions that would underpin our methodological approach. These not only set the foundation and tone, but enabled us to selectively choose evaluation methods that were inclusive and spoke to the key questions and outcomes selected.
To ensure we gathered robust data and had a wide range of perspectives, we spoke to various stakeholders, across the charity, including:
Patrons: beneficiaries of the charity who can participate in as few or as many events as they choose or need.
Staff team: who support patrons and artists, and ensure projects and sessions run smoothly.
Artists: commissioned creative practitioners who facilitate sessions.
Researchers: as Wellcome Trust has a focus on public engagement, each funded project had corresponding researchers who would give feedback to Mental Fight Club on the impact of the work.
We did choose to opt for interviews and focus groups for certain stakeholders, comfortable with this option, to provide a space for reflection. Nevertheless, in response to Mental Fight Club’s commitment to avoiding clinical evaluation tools, we used a number of creative methods to gather insights from the patrons in particular, as they are the group most likely to have been affected by standardised and, in some aspects, institutional approaches.
We wanted our methodology to provide a space for patrons to share their stories in a safe and trusting environment. We initially chose three ‘non traditional’ tools of evaluation including:
Patrons writing a guestbook entry of their experiences of the projects they engaged in.
Patrons drawing, writing, or reflecting in a storyboard format of their journeys since starting the project.
A visual and interactive scale where patrons could map certain themes such as their confidence and wellbeing.
These activities happened in person.
The findings:
The insights obtained from our analysis solidified the positive impact that the charity has, but also shed a light on the importance of the various stakeholders in collaboratively ensuring the running of the charity is possible.
We found that:
The charity enables artists and patrons to feel empowered not only by their work but by the work of those around them.
The artists in particular were able to see how their work enabled patrons to blossom and build on skills that they had neglected.
The researchers were able to benefit from conversing with those with lived experience.
The activities were confidence building for patrons as they were able to engage in a variety of holistic activities.
The artists and researchers involved all took diverse approaches to creative creation across their projects.
Mental Fight Club platformed those with lived experiences in all scopes of their work.
Overall, we found that commissioning Artists and researchers for long term collaborations worked well for the charity. We found that the funded projects were a restorative process for those included.
Learning:
Mental Fight Club’s holistic approach to mental health supported our ability to work with honesty, transparency and care, particularly across our data collection period. Within the context of our methodological approach, specifically for patrons, we learnt how to tailor sessions to suit those we work with. The visual and interactive scale that we had envisioned for patrons to map, was an activity that many patrons did not respond well to. We found that this tool resembled ‘extractive’ and ‘clinical’ experiences for patrons. Therefore, we ultimately chose to no longer use this activity on the day. Our approach was iterative, which we learnt was fundamental across the project.
As we expand and work towards more participatory approaches to evaluation for a range of groups, we will continue to approach this type of work in a non-tokenistic and extractive manner. We work to listen in our research approaches to not only suit the clients we work with, but those at the very heart of what we do.
We were able to provide Mental Fight Club with a broader understanding of developing an evaluative mindset that suits their patrons and community. Our inclusive approach enabled us to develop a series of recommendations for the charity, as they move forward on their journey.
If we are to better serve communities, restorative and holistic approaches should be considered more widely across research and evaluation.