Empowering Patients and Challenging Health Professionals: Sex, Cancer and Art Textile Activism - Colette Dobson

Empowering Patients and Challenging Health Professionals: Sex, Cancer and Art Textile Activism is a multi-faceted research project which identifies methods for cancer patients to side-step their unease and communicate with medical professionals about any sexual and relationship problems that they have experienced during or after their medical treatment. Led by Dobson, the project explores how art textile can provide an alternative language for patients to articulate their emotions and any sexual difficulties.

The research methodology involved collaborative research with breast cancer patients. It produced a system for crafting textile artworks, which has then empowered patients to create works that express their perceived unmet emotional and sexual needs.

The research methodology also involved consultation and collaboration with health professionals, who often reported feeling anxious and inadequately skilled to handle patients’ questions on sexuality and relationships. The research sought address this issue by developing teaching materials that present arts textiles as a neutral, non-hierarchical communication system. Subsequently, arts textiles practice establishes the practitioner-patient relationship as people working to help one another understand a difficult, hard-to-articulate situation.

Since 2017, the Christie NHS Foundation Trust Hospital (Europe’s largest single site cancer centre) has used the research to support medical professionals who work with patients who suffer sexual difficulties. The Christie’s Gynae-Oncology department also collects artworks made in the communication process, using them to support patients in understanding how their illness and treatment can affect their sexual anatomy.

The project has resulted in 3 conference presentations, 1 published peer-reviewed paper and 2 symposium papers, educational workshops for NHS practitioners and nursing students, a toolkit for use in NHS patient consultations, a series of 20 Support and Information Study Days for Macmillan Cancer charity workers, and a co-produced patient/artist website.