Live well with Pain – Beyond Biomedicine Health Celebration event

A number of initiatives from the across the partnership, underway across the country, shared their experience, stories and learning. Live Well With Pain, founded by Dr Frances Cole, an Honorary Fellow of the WRIHW, is a clinician- and lived experience-led resource. The LWWP 10-Footsteps approach to pain management developed with Durham University is a new training resource to support self-management of pain in primary care (AHSN Bright ideas in Health Award winner 2021), and during the pandemic, inspired the Footsteps Festival, now a regular on-line resource for pain livers, discussed by Dr Christine Penlington (Newcastle University).

The cross-sector partnership, Unmasking Pain, led by Balbir Singh Dance Company (https://www.balbirsinghdance.co.uk/unmasking-pain/), including LWWP and the WRIHW, gave a presentation about their innovative project taking their distinctive, collaborative and creative approach into a new realm to support people living with pain (Fuse Health award winner, 2023). The event included science data findings; artist and participant reflections, some through poetry inspired by the project, and Indian dance performances mirroring the project’s activities from puppet-making and singing to nature walks and movement choreography. The audience comprised Pain liver programme participants, a range of health practitioners, academics, UG and PG students, Julie Ward former MEP, local artists and the general public, who enjoyed the whole menu and the premier of the Unmasking Pain film.