Access to training and development opportunities are essential to the effectiveness of a competency framework and the MYRIAD Spark Training Programme was designed to support practitioners to meet the competencies we have identified as relevant to global majority, creative mental health practitioners.
Delivered by experts in the cultural, voluntary and mental health sectors, the training course was designed to support early career practitioners including mental health practitioners wishing to use more of their own creative practice in their work, as well as creative practitioners wishing to move into mental health groupwork. Whilst the course was designed for global majority practitioners working with global majority communities, most of the resources we developed also have broader relevance.
The training course covered the following areas and where possible we have provided downloadable resources for your own use:
Thirteen global majority practitioners took part in the course and their feedback evidenced the value they placed on the training and that they felt better equipped to support global majority community mental health through creative practice.
Following completion of the course, participants were offered paid placements with a health or voluntary sector organisation.
Participants also confirmed our understanding that training and development opportunities for global majority practitioners are hard to access or non-existent, and that there is both appetite and need for more support and development both locally and nationally.
SPARK training participant, Lorraine, explained: “I don’t take continued professional development lightly…as a practising counsellor and creative practitioner, I wanted to marry the two sides of my world, mental health and the arts. The SPARK training programme has given me the tools to do this. The continuity in support for global majority communities begins the process of true meaningful change…it seems so simple; we need more of this.”
SPARK training participant, Milana, said, “SPARK training sits within the wider MYRIAD project aiming to improve creative mental health training and opportunities for global majority communities and practitioners. The knowledge we have taken away from this can now be proactively put into practice in communities that need the support.”
All participants were offered a paid placement with one of five test and learn projects within the VCFSE sector. Through relational person-centred dialogue we matched trainees to organisations based on their skills, interests and experience. Careful consideration was given to practitioners’ own lived experience and to whether this would be an asset or potential barrier to a successful placement.
