Feel Good Friday was an adult event which took place at the Gregson Community and Arts Centre as part of Campus in the City 2024. Pleasure is good for us, but it is often overlooked because we don’t have the time, money or support to find it. To change this, Dr Rachael Eastham hosted Feel Good Friday, featuring fun interactive workshops, critical conversations on what pleasure means to us and our health, and a free hot lunch.

Find out more about the event and Rachael’s partnership working with this Campus in the City case study, in the form of a podcast!

About the podcast

Charles Tyrer is the CEO of the Gregson Centre, Lancaster. The establishment of a CEO role in 2022 was one of myriad changes to the governance of The Gregson Centre, Lancaster – a community and arts centre- inspired by efforts to ‘save’ the Gregson Centre in the aftermath of closures due to covid-19. These changes saw the organisation shift to being run entirely by the charity, rather than a private management company.

Charles describes ‘inheriting’ Dr Rachael Eastham along with this job. Up to that time, since 2020, Rachael had been volunteering at The Gregson Centre, including as part of an ‘arts and health’ steering group. As a health researcher at Lancaster University what has grown out of these connections is a rich range of collaborative projects including: as part of Bay Health Festival/s; as part of Light up Lancaster, INTERGENERATE a pilot action research project on intergenerational digital music production; Breath of Fresh Air singing for lung health choir; and Feel Good Friday as part of Campus in The City.

United by shared commitments to working in participatory, affirmative and creative ways, Charles and Rachael (along with a wide range of community-based organisations and individuals) continue to work to pursue the development of equitable, non-clinical approaches to supporting community health and wellbeing. In the podcast, Rachael and Charles discuss the Feel Good Friday event and reflect on the realities of working together, what their way of working together has enabled to happen, and what it takes to pursue truly equitable research collaborations.

Sit back, tune in, and reflect on your own practice.

Why Campus in the City?

Dr Rachael Eastham, who led Feel Good Friday at the Gregson Centre, lists the benefits of taking part in Campus in the City:

• ‘Give something back’ to local communities and help build public understanding of research and the diverse roles of researcher/s
• Opportunity to pilot or sense-check a potential research idea with communities
• Connection with diverse professionals and projects under the banner of Campus in the City – the opportunity to be part of something ‘bigger than’ your own project/s and team elevates the visibility of individuals and ‘research’ more generally
• Development of relationship with colleagues e.g. Jess Shaw, Public Engagement Manager. This presented immediate benefit at the time of Campus in the City in terms of planning and delivery, but has also helped me understand better who to approach (and how) in Public Engagement and Partnerships teams in future
• Marketing support for the event/your project
• Collaboration with Campus in the City boosted resource as the festival covered the venue costs
• Relationship development between the University and external partners e.g. The Gregson Centre, Lancaster and all local providers at the event
• Development of shareable outputs that outlive the Campus in the City event e.g. at Feel Good Friday a zine was produced, and then the subsequent podcast, about the ongoing collaborative work between the Gregson Centre, Lancaster and myself
• The subsequent podcast produced as a Public Engagement case study by Jess Shaw, has also presented the opportunity to:
• Celebrate and archive ongoing partnership working with a local community organisation
• Share insights for learning with wider colleagues
• Provide an accessible resource also shareable by the Gregson Centre, Lancaster, as the external partner in this work

Acknowledgements

The music featured on the podcast is from projects undertaken as part of the collaboration discussed. These include:

Intro sounds: by team INTERGENERATE – a pilot action research project involving digital music production between young and older people.

Choral interlude: by Breath of Fresh Air choir, a singing for lung health choir.

Outro sounds: are by Lancaster young people made as part of the ‘In Our Own Words’ project as part of Light up Lancaster festival , with community musician Charlie Brown and visual artist Vaz Lockett.

Thank you to Stuart Powers and the Health Innovation One podcasting suite for enabling this recording to be made on campus.

Special thanks to all Feel Good Friday participants who took part with curiosity, delight and good humour throughout the day. Thanks to Oxana and Natalia who provided a delicious Ukrainian lunch at the event. Thanks to all local collaborators who offered Feel Good workshops, and the Gregson staff and volunteers. And a big thank you to Charles, for giving his time to speak on the podcast and share his insights.

This podcast is part of a suite of case studies exploring engagement work developed as part of campus in the city.