The Be(e) Tree Blog

Please note: This Blog follows on from The Wishing Well Blog, so you might want to read that first.

Written by Dr Rebecca Livingston.

Community consultation and engagement events can support people to develop a shared understanding of each other’s views and experiences. While language is key in how we relate to each other, increasingly, research recognises the relational value of using creative methods to communicate our thoughts, feelings, and experiences.

Creative methods, includes a wide variety of activities, like arts, crafts, music, dancing, games and many more. Through these activities, meaningful objects or outputs are produced. Things like, dance, song, films, pictures, photographs, decorations, ornaments, tapestries etc. Creative methods involve activities and objects that are multi-sensory; meaning, we engage our senses (hear, see touch etc.,) through the creative experience. The relational value of these multisensory creative activities and objects, is that they can transport us to a place that draws upon collective memories, moments, and feelings, which resonate deeply with our human need for connection and meaning.

It is through the creative activity of making something together – we connect, and through the object we co-produce together – we become the architects of a shared meaning.

To help public, patients, and staff to create shared values with and for each other, we held a creative methods workshop at the Public Community and Engagement with Research (PCER) Conference at the University of Oxford, where connection and meaning were enabled through a creative activity and object called The Be(e) Tree.

The Be(e) Tree is a co-produced creative object that is a symbol of community care and engagement for patients, public, and healthcare workforce.

Now, before we delve into how the Be(e) Tree came about, you might be wondering why we have chosen the wording ‘Be(e)’ instead of ‘Bee’. Well, the wording ‘Be(e)’ draws our attention to two things that have important meaning for the creative co-production of shared values. These are: community and care:

(1) Bees are nature’s hard-working community helpers that carefully pollenate plants and make honey. Our Tree welcomes friendly Bees as a symbol of community care and engagement.

(2) Our Tree also contains message leaves describing what patients, public, and workforce can ‘Be’ for each other to create a caring community with shared values (e.g., ‘Be kind’). Be(e) messages are simple, creative ways to share positive values with others, like a friendly community of Bees.

This creative activity came about from our Wishing Well project. Not long ago, we worked with patients and staff at a Deep End GP Practice in North East England on the creation of a physical wish box and a digital wishing well. (By ‘Deep End’ we mean in an area of high deprivation).

We asked patients and staff to make ‘wishes’ about what they wish others at their GP Practice knew or understood about them. We then held a Wishful Thinking exercise at the Practice, where staff visited six Wish Stations and reflected on whether these wishes could be made come true. Staff engaged in creative problem-solving through the lens of wishful thinking – thinking about how relational, organisational, and system barriers to patient care and staff wellbeing could be improved.

Next, we wanted to develop these wishes and wishful responses into a set of shared values. The idea being, that these shared values would enable patients and staff to develop a shared understanding about working and navigating care in the Practice they, as a community, share.

To do this, we brought our gallery of Wish Stations to the PCER Conference at University of Oxford, which was attended by members of the public, and by patients and staff from a Deep End GP Practice. We asked people to visit the Wish Stations, reflect on the wishes and wishful responses, and think about one key Be(e) message that patients and staff could benefit from knowing or understanding about each other. With each of these key messages representing a shared value for patients and staff.

After visiting the Wish Stations, people in attendance carefully crafted leaves with Be(e) messages. On each leaf, people wrote down a key reminder message; a shared value of what patients and staff could remember to ‘Be’ for each other. And here are some examples:

“Be patient, we are patients too. We are here to help”

“Be aware some patient cannot describe problems and ailments very clearly”

“Be considerate. Being a patient is a complex experience, and being a receptionist is a complex job”

People then decorated the Be(e) Tree beautifully with the carefully crafted leaves, creating a canopy of shared values for patients and staff to read and remember to understand and care for each other.

To close the workshop, patients and staff from the GP Practice visited the Be(e) Tree and selected a message leaf that resonated with them, reading it out loud to others and sharing the meaning of those messages with the group.

Healthcare workforce and patients benefit from engaging in creative consultation exercises (like the Wishing Well) and using creative methods (like the Be(e) Tree) to develop a shared understanding of each other.

Co-producing the Be(e) Tree brought patients, public, and staff together as a caring community. Through creating leaves with messages, decorating the Be(e) Tree, and reflecting on key messages together – patients and staff established connections and created shared meaning – symbolised by the shared value leaves.

Given the increasing system pressures impacting healthcare services and workforce wellbeing, including recruitment and retention, developing a shared understanding between patients and staff could not be more important for workforce culture, cohesion, and sustainability. While workforce need time, resources, and infrastructure to deliver care; they also need to be recognised and valued to connect with their communities. We feel that creating things together is the key to supporting connection and meaning within our healthcare communities.

Here at the Workforce Voices Partnership, we look forward to co-producing further wellbeing innovations with healthcare – that support the workforce to connect with their patient communities through creative methods. We would like to thank the public, patients, and primary care staff who co-produced the Be(e) Tree with us.