“Improvisation opens the senses.” - Healthcare professional

For three days in September I spent time with a group of actors, musicians, music therapists and health care workers, exploring the potential for collaborating through improvisation. We explored three particular themes: beginnings and engagement, listening, and touch. This is not the kind of thing that I have done before, and it was undoubtedly experimental. I also have relatively little experience of acting, music therapy or health care, a factor which added both to my curiosity and to begin with my anxiety how to engage with and help to facilitate these days. What I have been particularly struck by was the speed with which, as a group of fifteen strangers at the beginning, we reached profound levels of expression and emotional engagement, and opened up multiple modes of listening and attending to one another in our different professional disciplines and perspectives. The project is funded by the London Centre for Arts and Cultural Enterprise (LCACE).  Perhaps it’s not surprising. As a musician I discovered that I am not so closely attuned to my sense of touch. Listening with my ears I am trained to do. Listening through my skin I do all the time, but rarely notice. Perhaps it’s also something of a disease of our time that in many cultures touch is assiduously avoided – how careful we are, for example on the London Underground, to keep out of each other’s space wherever possible. Where physical touch just can’t be kept at bay, we cling to metaphorical distance, making sure no eye contact is made.  The workshop reconnected me with the pleasure and spectrum of communication available through the sensitivity of touch. There was huge joy in exploring the textures of our physical surroundings, rediscovering its colours and tones; the energy and electricity in the space between skin to skin touch; the relationships between distance and proximity or physical and metaphorical touch; the power and impact of different qualities of physical touch and of touch in contexts as diverse as health care and drama.  “Intense attention in listening – to hear others I need to see, feel (sense), touch, hear and be with them. It is impossible to not listen to someone’s story – so how do people do that at work?” We began the day exploring the Old Anatomy Theatre at King’s College through touch, taking the time to reconnect with familiar objects and materials with more concentrated and physical attention, and to become acquainted with the eccentricities of this particular space. As part of this we played with the process of meeting one another, making contact through mirroring each other physically, touching or not touching as we pleased. This immediately opened up a further sensuous dimensions, as relationships started to emerge between participants close together, or across the distance of the room. Playful physical conversations came centre stage, and an almost anarchic process of taking ownership of the rooms as standard conventions of sitting on chairs, writing on tables, walking on the floor were overturned. “I particularly enjoyed making music with wheelchairs, wash bowls and bed rails, the noise of which I normally associate with functional or even aggressive sounds.” We experienced touch involved in doing a set of neurological observations in a health care setting: the physical manipulation required, the quality of touch which might be experienced by a patient, the speed with which such observations might need to be done and on a repetitive basis over a short period of time. Such observations become utterly routine for professionals, and yet the potential for them to feel invasive, even violent, or conversely to convey an attitude of care, was immediately apparent. We noticed as well how the quality of touch in this situation changes when accompanied by music. We developed a feeling for physical space through engaging with space itself, the air between our hands initially, and then drawing this awareness into ever increasing physical spaces. And as we improvised freely, we played out, for example, getting stuck physically, sensations of constriction in a space, being touched physically whilst playing an instrument, becoming an integral part of an instrument; connecting to music through touching its production….  “Opening up attention and awareness as a key thread in my teaching. The potential to be alive to someone (touch, listening etc) is infinite. What comes with it is the desire to play.” “I realised upon listening – and discussion – how much music and nursing have in common.”