Dr Pamela Whitaker

Title of Talk

PhotoVoice: Picturing Place in the Making 

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Dr Pamela Whitaker is a lecturer in art psychotherapy at the Belfast School of Art with a keen interest in using photography to document the art of walking. She is currently on the research team for CHOICE (Challenging Health Outcomes/Integrating Care Environments), which will establish a community partnership to co-produce innovative arts-based approaches to tackling social exclusion and reducing the health inequalities experienced by people living with mental health challenges. She will be speaking about CHOICE and her collaboration with Inspire Wellbeing, experts with lived experience, a community advisory board and associate researchers from the disciplines of photography, architecture, psychology, history, and the social sciences. 

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The PhotoVoice research project at Belfast Exposed is a feature of CHOICE (Challenging Health Outcomes - Integrating Care Environments) which is a collaborative research project with people who are long term service users of mental health services co-produced with a community coalition of mental health advocates. The Photo Voice series has been initiated at Belfast Exposed with lived experience experts who are documenting their life experiences through photography and spoken narratives. Photo Voice is a form of visual storytelling and it has been utilised for health promotion and social empowerment. The overall aim of the research is to co-produce innovative arts-based approaches to tackle social exclusion and the reduction of health inequities. 

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Pamela will be joined on stage by members of the PhotoVoice team 

• Bronagh Simpson

• Joanne Martin

• Marie Etherington 

• Kenny Ramsey 

• Anna Skoura

• Ian Miller

• Saiorse Sexton

• Elisa Nishimura