TY - JOUR

T1 - Therapeutic spaces of care farming

T2 - Transformative or ameliorating?

AU - Kaley, Alexandra

AU - Hatton, Chris

AU - Milligan, Christine

N1 - This is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in Social Science & Medicine. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in Social Science & Medicine, 227, 2018 DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2018.05.011

PY - 2019/4/1

Y1 - 2019/4/1

N2 - Since Wil Gesler's earliest articulation (Gesler, 1992; Gesler, 1996) key thinkers in the field of therapeutic landscapes have sought to emphasise the embodied, contextual and wholly relational nature of the relationship that exists between people and place. However, the extant research has tended to focus on the relational healing experience as this occurs ‘in the moment’ and with reference to a specific location or site of healing, with less attention being paid to what happens to people when they return to their ordinary or everyday places. In this paper, we reflect on findings from visual ethnographic work (including photography and film) that explored the therapeutic landscape experiences of people with intellectual disabilities engaged in care farming interventions for health and wellbeing. The study also recruited farm staff and family members or carers to take part, and comprised 20 participants in total. Having identified a gap in our understanding, consideration is given to wider impact that engaging in these sorts of activities had on the everyday lives of the participants in this study. We argue that this study has identified two types of therapeutic journey that broadly fit the experiences of study participants. The first type of journey denotes landscape experiences that are transformative. Here the therapeutic power of the care farm landscape resides in the ability of activities conducted on care farms to influence other aspects of participants' lives in ways that promote wellbeing. By contrast, there is another type of journey where the therapeutic power of the care farm resides in its ability to ameliorate challenging or harmful life situations, thus offering people a temporary site of respite or refuge. We conclude that these findings denote an important development for this sub-field of health geography, not only because they draw attention to the transformative power of the therapeutic encounter, but also the broader socio-spatial environments in which people live and ways in which these can limit that power.

AB - Since Wil Gesler's earliest articulation (Gesler, 1992; Gesler, 1996) key thinkers in the field of therapeutic landscapes have sought to emphasise the embodied, contextual and wholly relational nature of the relationship that exists between people and place. However, the extant research has tended to focus on the relational healing experience as this occurs ‘in the moment’ and with reference to a specific location or site of healing, with less attention being paid to what happens to people when they return to their ordinary or everyday places. In this paper, we reflect on findings from visual ethnographic work (including photography and film) that explored the therapeutic landscape experiences of people with intellectual disabilities engaged in care farming interventions for health and wellbeing. The study also recruited farm staff and family members or carers to take part, and comprised 20 participants in total. Having identified a gap in our understanding, consideration is given to wider impact that engaging in these sorts of activities had on the everyday lives of the participants in this study. We argue that this study has identified two types of therapeutic journey that broadly fit the experiences of study participants. The first type of journey denotes landscape experiences that are transformative. Here the therapeutic power of the care farm landscape resides in the ability of activities conducted on care farms to influence other aspects of participants' lives in ways that promote wellbeing. By contrast, there is another type of journey where the therapeutic power of the care farm resides in its ability to ameliorate challenging or harmful life situations, thus offering people a temporary site of respite or refuge. We conclude that these findings denote an important development for this sub-field of health geography, not only because they draw attention to the transformative power of the therapeutic encounter, but also the broader socio-spatial environments in which people live and ways in which these can limit that power.

KW - Therapeutic landscapes

KW - Disability studies

KW - Intellectual disability

KW - Ethnography

KW - Visual methods

KW - Health geography

KW - Care farming

U2 - 10.1016/j.socscimed.2018.05.011

DO - 10.1016/j.socscimed.2018.05.011

M3 - Journal article

VL - 227

SP - 10

EP - 20

JO - Social Science and Medicine

JF - Social Science and Medicine

SN - 0277-9536

ER -