Covid:
Starting off this avenue of research, the challenges seemed quite clear – I was venturing into a space of health which at the moment is the focus on major worldly crisis.
With this in mind I decided to still go ahead and find an adaptable way of applying my research into something that is both tangible but accessible in a time were contact with healthcare is currently and legally unaccessible.
Most of my planned interventions was to do a photoshoot with a few cancer patients along with their carers to understand their own experience better, we had scheduled to meet the 6th of July of 2021. However, due to fears of catching covid, the shoot was cancelled.
Currently, Spain has been experiencing a surge in cases and the emergency rooms are being filled again. At the point of the photoshoot appointment I still not had gotten my first vaccine because vaccines in Catalonia had run out. I only have just recently gotten my first vaccine; it seems that until I don’t get my second dose many of the people I have gotten in touch with won’t accept meeting for a shoot.
Culture:
Here’s one of my biggest challenges, aside from covid, it’s cultural. For the past four years most of my research, art work and technique has been developed in the UK. My focus has always been there and in fact, it was the reason I moved to study there because of a simple reason: culture and understanding.
In Spain, I have struggled to take things forward, culturally there is a lot of stigma around mental health, the arts and research. All of those are low funded and most times, politicians don’t wish to acknowledge the alarming importance of these fields. When I had reached out to people here for opinions and testing regarding other projects, people have been slow to reply, oftentimes asking to have a phone call though because of auditory issues – I always need to see responses written down (it helps me process information better and also understand it). This is something that in UK, I can express openly as neurodiversity is widely accepted and they’ll take the right measures to make sure that their response is accessible. Meanwhile, here, professionals seem to have a hard time understanding.
I have also struggled in terms of geographic thinking – while I think of the development of my project, I am aware that from September to December I will be in UK, and therefore- it would make sense to base my project there, not just because time-frame I need to be somewhere that is where I am but also, because professionally speaking and in terms of research, there are more efficient responses, involvement and understanding. I do not consider this a “hard” obstacle, but a realistic observation that based on time-frame, it’d make more sense to test interventions somewhere where they can be truly tested and analysed rather than somewhere where that process is still far from comprehended and is delayed in most occasions.
Conclusion of challenges:
Moving on, and based on my tutorial, I am going to create a geographic-less intervention in which I analyse stories and comments I have received from carers of cancer patients who are willing to participate in this storytelling project and construct it in a universal layout. The idea is that we understanding that the feelings of being a carer are mostly shared no matter where you’re from (or at least, we will analyse or observe if these are similar in any way) regardless of culture, race or gender. It will then be useful to categorise opinions too. The concept is to raise awareness that carers, mostly family members and friends, are part of a tough journey as well, and that recognition, mutual support and knowing that one is not alone feel like crucial themes to raise awareness on.