I started my career as a specialist dentist and educator, empathy being the bedrock of my clinical decision-making process. My work took an interesting trajectory when I decided to pursue a Masters in Global Health for which I was awarded the prestigious Karolinska Institutet Scholarship, which is awarded to no more than 10 people each year out of an applicant pool of 1,500 international students. It was during my degree in global health that I was introduced to qualitative research and discovered my passion for arts-based research. I dove right in and with Dr Manoj Kumar’s (Clinical Director of MHAT) support conducted my practicum on arts-based interventions for people with severe mental ill health. It was an invigorating experiment as I worked with a proficient arts-based therapist, Babitha Bhaskaran and observed the impact that art could have on the lives of people. The common consensus among the stakeholders was participation in an arts-based programme can provide ‘added value’ in aiding recovery in ways not facilitated by conventional treatment.
Following this, I worked as a Research Fellow on an interdisciplinary collaborative research project Mental Health Literacy Project https://www.mehelp.in/ led by Prof. Raghu Raghavan (Director of Mary Seacole Center, DMU) from 2018 to 2021. The project was everything I hoped for. I travelled across parts of the state, worked with local teams and understood the ground realities of mental healthcare in my home state of Kerala. The work involved extensive qualitative interviewing and I conducted and analysed around 100 interviews with support from co-investigator Dr.Amanda Wilson. This also allowed me to explore participatory theatre in urban, rural and tribal settings with established theatre professionals. The making and sharing of community theatre was a transformative process and immersing in the script-writing process and digital storytelling workshops opened up a whole new way of self and communal exploration. Participatory work allowed me to understand the lived experience of mental health service users and their families in an embodied and fluid manner. This cemented my desire to work with arts-based research and engage in ways to use art to promote social justice and well-being among marginalized communities. My journey with arts-based research progressed from observing the potential of arts to heal to a deeper and more nuanced understanding of the capacity of art to create and transform knowledge.
During the multiple field visits and conversations with mental healthcare professionals, especially Rekha Bose (Clinical Psychologist MHAT), I was made aware of the mental health crisis faced by sexual and gender minorities in the state, which is largely linked to stigma and prejudice directed against the community and the underlying patriarchy which dominates Keralite households. The idea of utilizing a transformative paradigm steeped in an arts-based and phenomenological approach crystallized after discussions with my supervisors and members of the partner NGO. All the pieces of the jigsaw were finally coming together as I decided to embark on this project to collaboratively explore sexual minority health.
In parallel, I have been steadily honing my skills in applied theatre and have been part of a Playback Theater Group in Bangalore for the past four years. It serves as a portal to immerse in narrative retellings and provides a brave space for catharsis and playful camaraderie. I have also been trained by internationally acclaimed participatory theatre stalwart Adrian Jackson in Jokering and the Theatre of Oppressed. My understanding of embodied knowledge and poesies grows with every rehearsal and every opportunity to perform.
Dr Sanjana Kumar
Doctoral candidate in Psychology
De Montfort University