The Comedy Trust has a strong commitment to advancing its work in the arts and health sector. Over the last seven years the trust has developed and delivered in partnership with local health authorities (including Liverpool Primary Care Trust and Alder Hey Children’s Hospital) a number of innovative and highly successful creative health projects. A key theme throughout all of our programmes has been to explore, test out and evaluate the use of humour and comedy approaches in health settings.
There are two main strands to our work in this area:
• Providing training opportunities for health professionals, which explore the use of creative humour and comedy techniques in their delivery of services with patients.
• Providing creative workshops with patients and service users to devise a toolkit for using humour and comedy in their lives to help improve their health and well-being.
We have all heard the phrase Laughter is the Best Medicine and research tells us that a good laugh can help to reduce stress, bring down blood pressure, boost the immune system which can help fight off illnesses and lift our mood, helping us to feel generally happier. Our work in this area is about having fun but it’s also about exploring realistic ways in which health professionals and patients alike can use humour in their practices or lives to help improve their health and well-being.
Over the last seven years we have delivered a wide number of training programmes ranging from taster workshops and team building events to long-term projects.
Some of the settings we have worked in include: hospitals, primary health
trusts, waiting rooms, health & community centres, sheltered housing, schools,children’s centres, colleges and universities and businesses - with both service users and providers.
To read more about some of the key health projects we are involved in please click on a link below:
