Thea is joined by Thahmina Begum, an artist and art psychotherapist based in Leeds. Thahmina talks us through some amazing projects she’s led, using art as a vehicle for communities to process racial and intergenerational trauma.
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Music by scottholmesmusic.com
Listen to the episode on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. The full transcript is available below.
Show notes
- Take a look at one of Thahmina’s projects – ‘The Colour Palette‘ – that aims through art making to give voices to Bangladeshi groups and their lived experiences of racism.
- Learn more about a collaborative project from Thahmina – ‘Story in a Suitcase’ – where The Kushy Dil group, who are mostly from Bangladeshi backgrounds, worked together to create a sculptural installation in a suitcase.
- Keep updated on Thahmina’s work by following her on Instagram.
- Check out our briefing that investigates how intergenerational trauma and experiences of racism towards both parents and children affect their mental health and interactions.
- Read our report exploring the ways in which services can adapt to better support the mental health needs of people from racialised backgrounds.
Transcript
Alethea Joshi (AJ): Hello and welcome to Centre for Mental Health’s podcast. Centre for Mental Health challenges policies, systems and society so that everyone can have better mental health. I’m Thea Joshi and each episode I speak with our guests about mental health and social justice. And today I chatted with Thahmina Begum who is an artist and art psychotherapist based in Leeds. Her work explores ideas around culture, identity, belonging, and the British Muslim diaspora. And I loved hearing about her work, harnessing the power of art to heal and process trauma, including racial trauma. We talked about Thahmina’s desire for art therapy to be available to everyone and the impact it’s had in her work with marginalised communities. Speaking to Thahmina was a real encouragement to me. So hope you enjoy. So welcome Thamina. It’s so lovely to have you on Centre for Mental Health’s podcast today. Welcome.
Thahmina Begum (TB): Thank you for having me.
AJ: I’m so excited to hear more about you and the work you’ve been doing. I think the only problem we might have is that I’ve got a million questions to ask you and I don’t think we can have time for them all. But yeah, I’d love to just hear a little bit more about your work, and what you’ve been up to lately. So I know that you’re an artist, and you’ve done work exploring cultures and identities and the British Muslim diaspora. And I’m really interested to know as well, like, what, what led you to become an art psychotherapist?
TB: Yeah, so I’ve worked many years in youth and community development in the third sector. So for a health charity, primarily working with marginalised communities in order to reduce health inequalities. So within my time, so like, I worked 20 odd years with grassroots community groups, really authentically, you know, set up from the needs of the communities. And we did all sorts of things like, you know, walking groups, and having a five a day and things like that. And then I was working as a practising artist at the same time.
So, my little boy’s 9, about 10 years ago, I just, it was like a lightbulb moment for me when I was on maternity leave. And I just thought to myself, I work as an artist all these years in health, put them together, and really want to train to become an art psychotherapist. And I think, all my years working in health and within community across different age groups, so from youth projects, to old people’s projects to adults, I just saw the disproportionate nature of how health is affecting them, in particular mental health, the disproportionate nature of how it’s getting to acute level. And I think I really wanted to do something about it. Because within community development, there’s so much preventative work, but then when it gets to acute level, it’s that multiple layer of trying to get that wraparound care. There was many people when I was working with them that went to mental health services, but then didn’t continue their treatment or continue their sessions.
And then I think the more I spoke to them, the more I looked into it, they just were saying that they didn’t find anything that was relatable to them. And they they found it really hard to they found it really hard to open up about the things that they were going through. And hence the reason why I really wanted to train in art psychotherapy, and not just the talking therapies, as in not just psycotherapy, because it’s so transformational. I think because I used arts with many of the community and art projects that I did, I saw the transformational nature of what art could do for people both individually and in group settings. And I think from from many cultures and many different groups, talking and talking about problems and talking about mental health issues, is a really difficult thing. Just on a basic level, if you’ve not had the upbringing, or that culture or that community to talk about your feelings or talking about your emotions, it’s very, very alien. So therefore, art is almost like what we call in art psychotherapy, the triangular relationship. So, you know, the art forms as another thing.
So often, in some communities, you don’t give eye contact to people, that’s a sign of disrespect, or you do need to give eye contact, and that is a sign of respect. So hence the reason this is probably one of the layers of you know, when you’re talking to someone, you don’t want to give eye contact, so therefore you’re not revealing [anything]. Whereas art, you’ve got an object, you’ve got some art materials, that’s almost you’re looking at that [and] you can unpick and unpack [things] with. Does that make sense?
AJ: Oh, it does. That’s really, really fascinating. And I’m probably going to put this really crudely, but it’s almost like maybe art is a vehicle for having those therapeutic conversations? It sort of provides a means for expressing and exploring all of that stuff?
TB: No, absolutely, it almost acts like a third vehicle in the therapy room. And, you know, art gives so much autonomy and agency and self expression. So it’s not reliant on a two way thing where you know, you’re having to look for answers. When we’re born, the first part of our brain is the right hand side of the brain. And that’s where your unconscious parts of your brain [are], that’s where you’re telling the truth, and often, when you’re creative, creatively making or doing within arts and creative arts, then that is the bit that comes out.
And often when you’re drawing, you’re painting, you know, you’re expressing yourself creatively, it’s a mirror up to actually your unconscious and what’s really going on with you. And that image making or, you know, if you’ve made a sculpture or whatever form you’ve made in art, that acts as a vehicle, a centre point to maybe start a conversation. And it’s something that the client has come up with themselves, not me, as the therapist asking them what’s wrong, because it’s just so hard for people to start off.
And I think one of the major things around the mental health sector is around that first accessibility and building up that trust. And if you haven’t got trust with already quite marginalised, disengaged communities, you know, that trust is never going to build up. And in that way, art is so so powerful, because it automatically bonds you with that trust and builds up that therapeutic relationship.
AJ: That is amazing. And beautiful. It’s so cool to hear about that.
TB: And I think because creative arts, it’s such a variety that you can do. So whilst I’m in psychotherapy, I will use things that are within drama, within music, within dance, because when there’s particularly trauma that’s embodied in the body, you know, we use movement, we use musical instruments, we’ll do storytelling, we’ll do poems, we’ll do life story work. And because you’ve got almost like, so many different recipes that you could almost use, you will use it as an individual thing. And sometimes within mental health it’s generalised. And the beauty of the creative therapies is being able to, you know, pick what is best for your client, and what they feel comfortable with, and where they’re starting off at. Not as a therapist, me telling them what to do, but actually really authentically, genuinely starting with where they’re at. yeah,
AJ: That is so fascinating. And I’d love to know a little bit more as well, this is all really new to me, and I was really interested what you said at the beginning of the conversation about finding that the communities that you’re working with, were just saying, I just don’t feel like there’s anything kind of relatable there in sort of the modalities or like forms of therapies that I’m being offered. And that was just like really interesting. Obviously, we’ve done a lot of work and a lot of conversations around the idea of kind of culturally informed practice, culturally informed therapy, and also just the need for kind of the therapeutic professions and therapeutic workforce to really much more represent the communities they’re serving. And we’re really aware of that disparity there. So, how did you find that process of training in art and psychotherapy?
TB: Yeah, I mean, you know, I was in the minority in terms of training, and within the profession, which is a growing profession, and, you know, there’s more and more people of colour coming through, and talking about the issues that are important to us, whether it be race, whether it be intergenerational trauma, whether it be you know, multiple intersectionality of how health affects us, it’s all things that we can bring different topics and bring different things that affect us on a daily basis. And also things that have been brought to us generationally as well. And I think, you know, bringing bringing new perspectives. And I remember when I was training, you know, you’re taught quite white Eurocentric theories and things like that, but also, you have to be able to think about how is this going to work within the context. I mean, it’s really good that it’s so much like baseline that you will, you know, that gives you really good context and gives you really good frameworks and gives you really good theories.
But also, you know, there’s so much innovation that’s happening now within art therapy as well, because we’re working in all sorts of different settings, you know, not just the NHS, you know, across schools, and my particular passion is within the community. So, I’ve just recently finished a project. And it was an amazing project because it was a partnership project working with unaccompanied asylum seekers, and it was a partnership project with the British Library and Leeds social care. So it was based within the community, at Leeds City Museum and the sessions were all there. And we worked on a project using the British Library’s maps archives, to map the journeys of the young people that had come over, quite recently some of them even like, just a couple of months. And it was amazing, it was just so amazing to see, you know, how they just enjoyed the sessions of really having that quality, high quality, therapeutic experience to be able to, you know, hold that space and be attuned to them young people. And then we ended up having an exhibition at Yorkshire Playhouse, you know, with their families and friends to celebrate. So there’s different ways.
And I think that’s what I want to bring different new flavours, new innovation to the profession, and build on from the existing work and all the different theories and all the great work that art therapists have built up for us, because it’s a 50 year old profession, and there’s been so much great work that’s done, but it’s about, you know, learning from that, and building on to what do we need in 2024. So I think it’s within that project, it was really important that I had supervision. So that’s a really good like element of it. But also really understanding each and every art activity that I had with these young people was really, really carefully curated. So from, you know, using sand and using playdough, and you know, really playful art materials, knowing the context of why I was using that and explaining it to the team.
And having a really supportive team was just like, amazing. So using them materials like sand and playdough. You know, it’s all that element of play and joy, but also them young people missing out on certain developmental milestones that you are reentering when you’re using them sessions. And often, most of the young people have gone through some sort of traumatic experience, travelling and coming to the UK, or their traumatic journeys actually arriving. And the antidote, the sort of the opposite of trying to alleviate trauma is that element of play within the nervous system. So, you know, creating new pathways for learning, expressing and just being playful and joyful, and working together. And just that resilience, and also that joy of producing something was just amazing.
AJ: It’s all so fascinating to me, and the different projects that you’ve just talked about, I mean, incredible. I will put various links to Thahmina’s this work into the show notes, because it’s very encouraging as well to hear about this example of really fresh, powerful therapeutic projects that are meeting people in these different ways. And it’s just super encouraging. And we need to hear these stories of like, good practice, and breakthrough for sure, in this line of work, we need to hear it.
TB: Absolutely. And I think often people use the terms things like ‘hard to reach communities’, but actually, it’s not, it’s hard to reach services, do you know what I mean? And often with certain systems and, you know, structures there’s internalised stigmas, unconscious biases that on multiple levels, often it’s organisational, often it’s institutional, but actually, you’ve got some amazing organisations, when you’ve got a great partnership, you can do really amazing things, do you know what I mean? And when you’ve got the same sort of core values and ethics, that you all want the same thing, really, really powerful things could happen. So within that project, everybody was on the same level, we all brought different elements to it, but we were all working as part of a team. So when I talked about supervision, we had an amazing supervisor. And you know, the social worker and the apprentice, they had supervision as well. So it was a new element. And it’s not about somebody knowing all the answers. It’s about bringing different flavours to it, and seeing what this works for your projects. You know what I mean?
AJ: Yeah, that’s so interesting, and we’ve already kind of touched on this in what you’ve already discussed. But obviously, we at the Centre and you through your work, have this focus on challenging health inequalities and mental health inequalities. And I’m just kind of interested to know a little bit more about how you’ve seen these inequalities play out in the different communities and projects that you have worked with.
TB: Yeah, so I think there’s so much in health inequalities when we’re talking about global South or BAME communities, whatever the terminology you want to use. Often, it’s things not spoken about within mental health. So it is them things of racial trauma and intergenerational trauma. There’s three types of trauma that happen, but within racial trauma, all three different types of trauma happen, you know, it can happen once, it can happen recurring, and it can happen out of the blue. And as a person of colour, you’re enduring that every day and you don’t know where it’s gonna come from. And often, it can be covert, it can be overt, you know what I mean.
And it can be internalised, it can be just out on the road and things like that people are having to deal with them little traumas every day. But it’s the little build up of the everyday thing around mental health, that that exacerbates the mental health issues. As an art psychotherapist, the biggest thing or the greatest thing you can give someone is a safe space. And what I mean by that is the emotional and psychological safe space that you can give to someone, that’s the greatest thing. And if somebody doesn’t feel safe, they’re never going to thrive in whatever aspect, whether it be school, whether it be work, whether it be home, you know, so I think that’s the baseline. And when people are not feeling safe in any aspect of their environment, they will never thrive in all aspects of their health. And I think that’s the baseline.
And I think, particularly like, we just had to look at the stats and the data around COVID. You know, those of us that have worked in health a long time, it didn’t come as a great shock, you know, the Black community, the Bangladeshi community four times [higher rates] in terms of mortality. And it is them things around race and intergenerational trauma that people are holding on to that have made people have premature deaths. And you touch on the project that I did with Tetley called the colour palette. And that was during the time of COVID. That was during the pandemic. And for me, personally, I was just sick and tired of people talking about it, I wanted to do something about it and wanted to take action. So that’s why I applied for the panic bursary, which was a small bit of funding, and I did a small community research project with three different generations of Bangladeshi women.
So young people, adults and older people. And we did three sessions using a method called creative laboratories. And the first session, they had an abundance of materials, which got them really excited, which then induced conversations around race. And that’s when they started learning, and you know, unpicking some of the racial experiences that had happened. And then in the second session, I just put charcoal down in the middle, so just charcoal, and they did a black and white image of one of the images that they had in the session one. And then in the third session, they wrote a letter to their races, which was so cathartic for them. And they read it out to the rest of the group. I mean, I’m just giving you a real snippet, it is online so you can watch it and also, I’ve wrote a reflective piece in a book around different reflections from art therapists around the world. So I can send you that as well.
But you saw, like as a person that was, you know, holding that space, and having been through my own racial trauma, I still was so gobsmacked with the amount of incidents that happened across all the different generations. So for young people, the optimistic side of me thinking, oh, you know, things have changed. But actually, a great deal hasn’t changed. And in many ways, lots of things have gotten worse for young people. And then with the adults, there was lots of things around race and religion. So the intersectionality of that trauma. And then with the older people, they still found it so hard to talk about, even though I said it was a safe space, a lot of them held in their racial trauma for like 40/50 years, and they still thought they were gonna get arrested by talking about it. I mean, it’s that internalised thing that they hold on to. And with with the older generation it’s the trauma of not only race, but the trauma of migration that they’ve never had an opportunity to talk about.
And I think within my art practice, because I look at identity and belonging and cultural stories, so art telling a story of migration and things like that, it’s an opportunity for communities to talk and express through the artwork. And last year, I worked with the women’s group that I worked with in Beeston it was a two year project called creative roots. And it was all to do with identity and culture and belonging. And it was a two year project and it was amazing because, as well as doing lots of different art stuff, such as textiles and photography, we did things like food and we did cooking together. And you know, when we think of creativity, there’s so much culturally that you have within creativity particularly in Bangladeshi communities so like with food and with weddings and celebrations and it’s not the norm what is given.
So I think each community has their way, whether it be through music, or through food and things like that. It’s just being given a platform to be able to do it. And then we had an exhibition at Leeds City Museum. So it was amazing. So I always try to do high quality projects that communities are really proud of, but also, then they’re able to take their children and the next generation to open up these spaces, because they never thought that they’d have a place there.
AJ: I mean, there’s so much I could ask you about there. But just going right back to what you were saying about the different generational experiences of racism, and also that disproportionate mortality in the COVID pandemic. And I think that something we say a lot at the Centre is this idea that racism is toxic for mental health. And we know that that’s true. And as you say, the stats show that as well, in terms of health, and generally, but also in terms of, as you say, disproportionate presentation in acute settings. And all of these things that we really have to kind of not shy away from
TB: I was just gonna say, I think we need to take an approach that’s non pathological. And I think we need to create systems that are accessible, but I think there’s a real lack of care and empathy. And I think we need to induce that. But ultimately, that trust with communities that they can do it and you know, develop leadership and develop all the services that are needed. So they’re flexible and adaptable, rather than rigid and one size fits all. We need to look at, you know, not not bounding all communities in one sort of space together.
AJ: No, I totally agree. And it goes back to what you were saying about it not being people that are hard to reach, but services being hard to reach and that’s something we continue to talk about. And again, this issue you raised around the intergenerational racial trauma project, it was reminding me about some work we did last year with researchers at King’s College London around the impact of racism on parents and children collectively, this kind of notion of intergenerational racial trauma. And it came into that as well, and how they affected each other, and that almost like symbiotic relationship between the two and the knock on effects on both. It’d be lovely to learn a little bit more about what you learned from that project and hearing those stories and experiences.
TB: Yeah, yeah. So I had an international commission, which I worked with the Bangladeshi artists and we looked at intergenerational trauma. So we looked at trauma. And she looked at trauma with women in Bangladesh, and I looked at intergenerational trauma. So I almost based it on my mum, myself, and then my daughter, so I’ve got an 18 year old daughter and how almost that generationally it passes through. So intergenerationally, it takes seven generations to pass down through the body, and often its inherited systems of oppression that’s held in the body that almost seeps out. So I created a body of work call ‘issues in the tissues, pains in the veins’.
So when my mum was pregnant with my big brother, it was the liberation war in 1971 for Bangladesh. And she was pregnant, she talked about having to move from the town that she was in to my granddad’s village, where they were all kept in a big house, a big hut, you know, while she was pregnant. And she only ever talked about this during COVID, because it was all them feelings, the reoccurring feelings of being locked in, tied in again, which she’d never spoken about before. So I really wanted to explore this a bit further. So the first piece that I made was called ‘bloodlines of trauma’, and it was mixed media piece using some of my mum’s saris, and then, you know, the blood on it. So you know, that genocide, you know, reeps through the body, so again, like when pain and trauma gets passed down, particularly a pregnant woman, it gets passed on generation to generation. And then I thought about myself, and then I made these small seven pieces, seven sculptures, small sculptures, all different colours, which represented the seven generations, and they were called molecules of change. So almost internally, what’s happening to you.
And then I created a piece around my daughter around hybrid identities. So it was screen prints, but some of the pieces were broken. So it was about the next year generation, breaking the glass open sort of thing, it was a pun on that. And then it was in a triangle. And then in the middle, there was a golden baton, and it was called the golden baton of change. So it was like a baton like almost what you have in relay, but then it was stuffed with mouldy cheese. So it’s almost what my mum had passed on to me to me passing on to my daughter, and it’s all them internalised things of what gets passed on. So in terms of health and going back to health, you know, my mum had type two diabetes and arthritis, and it’s all them internal diseases that gets passed on from generation. And I think what I loved about it is that, you know, all these, like really important, global, social issues that you can portray, through art in a really clever, educating, but also fun and joyful and a bit smelly way.
AJ: I mean, yeah, amazing. And I’ll link to as much of this as I can of your work, because it’s just great to hear about, I’m really captivated by this idea of the way that art can help to kind of heal or process racial trauma.
TB: Yeah, so I think it goes back to my point about pathologising illnesses and issues. And I think that’s why art and particularly art therapy, we want to heal people, we don’t want to cure people, we want to hold their hand and give them autonomy to make changes within themselves. And that’s why it’s so transformational, because you can do it in a really gentle way, at the pace of the person, rather than saying, this is the set block that I’m working with you. Because then you’re creating that invisible hierarchy. And then it goes back to them barriers of things being visible and invisible barriers. And then in turn, you’re, again, with your clients, you’re creating that moral injury, again, by creating that perpetuating hierarchy, if that makes sense. So, I think that’s where art eliminates that hierarchy, so that your clients can do it at their pace, and you’re just holding their hand on a journey that you’re privileged to be part of.
AJ: Yeah, and I mean, this is a big question, but I’d love to pose it to you. And just ask you, what do you think, is needed to start addressing the racial trauma that you are seeing so often?
TB: That’s a really big question. I think it’s a big question, but it’s quite a easy answer, I think. I think we need to put racial trauma at the forefront of a public health priority, right at the top, not shying away from it, because it affects it in so many different ways. And we can say, you know, a small part of this and a small part of that, but actually, to put it on a public health priority, we’ll put it at the forefront in everybody’s minds, and make it so important that this is a major, major factor in people’s health inequalities, particularly in communities that now we’ve got the data for, for COVID that we already knew. And in order to alleviate it. And we need services, and we need commissioners and politicians to be all around the benefits of creativity, and the benefits to our health.
So the whole agenda around creative health is so important, and we really need to push for that. And we really need to see strong leadership, we need politicians to pick up that baton and say we believe in this, we want to invest in this, we need cross party agreement to really drive this forward. Coming out of COVID, we saw so many people using creativity to get through the COVID, you know, and if it could help and heal people during COVID, we need to help and hold people coming out of it, because collectively as a nation, we’ve injured that trauma of COVID. So, you know, we’re still recovering, you know, rates of staff retention and employment are going down and you know, mental health [difficulties] are going up with young people, but just across the board. So there needs to be a real acknowledgement that we need to do something.
And creativity and creative arts can play a massive role in healing it, alleviating so many of the NHS pressures, but also embedding localised programmes that meet the needs of communities. I think we need greater research, we need lots more diversity in research, lots more diversity. And again, something that I’ve not touched on, but there’s real disparity in what is locally available as well. So, you know, we have to acknowledge there’s a north south divide, and the health inequalities that are related to that. We have to acknowledge the data and research around the lack of it from up north, and all these things we can do something about.
AJ: Yeah, I mean, literally what what you said there, I think you hit the nail on the head. And again, I just I love that I idea of the power of art and harnessing that power of art to heal trauma. We all need that, but also there are disparities there. And it’s kind of getting access to these things as well, isn’t it? And I know that that’s something we’ve talked about before, sometimes these things can feel out of reach to more marginalised communities and actually art is not just for, you know, elite white people or the middle classes, but actually extending the healing power of it should be for everyone.
TB: Yeah and that was one of my principal drivers of wanting to train as an art psychotherapist. I didn’t want art therapy to be just for the elite few, I wanted it to be for the masses. And hence, the reason why I’m so passionate about, you know, wanting art therapy in the community so that it’s accessible for all, you know, it’s such an amazing, amazing therapy. And art is a modality of it. But essentially, you’re holding all that space for people and really high quality services and provisions is the way forward. And you know, rather than getting it to acute level, why not invest in all the preventative measures, invest really an early stage, so we’re not we’re spending 10 times the amount when it gets to that acute or crisis level.
AJ: Yeah, 100%. And we are very much beating that drum as well. Totally agree with you. And I just feel like there is a million more questions I could have asked you about all of those things. And I would still love to do that. But for now, as we come to a close, what I’d love to ask is, obviously you’re doing a lot of work really at the sharp edge of these issues. And so I’m interested to know, you know, what do you do to support your own mental health?
TB: I think, for me, I love doing my own art. I didn’t touch on [this], I think most people that work in the arts, whether it be socially engaged artists, or art therapists, are coming from a personal standpoint. So my dad passed away when I was 17. And I remember using arts as a way of healing. And again, when I had my little boy, it was quite a traumatic time, then, so again I used arts for myself. So if you can use arts for yourself, hence the reason why you love it. You can see the benefit for yourself. So you just want to give it a little bit to everybody else. And, you know, have that awareness. So I like art, I like going for walks. And I love going for massages when I’ve got the time!
AJ: Oh, I love that. That is just such a lovely note to end on. I just want to say thank you Thahmina, because we’ve talked on the podcast before about this need for hope, and hope in the face of really difficult times for mental health collectively and as individuals. And I just think it’s really encouraging and very hope inducing to hear about the stuff that you’ve been working on, and the power for change to happen. So thank you so much for sharing that with us today.
TB: Thank you so much for having me. I’ve loved having our little chat. And like I said if you give people a little bit, they will blossom and they will thrive, we just need to give that little bit. I’m always amazed, with my clients and with my group members, what they end up producing, when you give them a few art materials. It’s just absolutely phenomenal. Everyone’s got the ability, everyone’s creative, you know, and it’s just about giving them that little space to blossom thrive and flourish.
AJ: Amazing. Thank you so much, Thahmina. Thanks for listening. You can join the fight against mental health inequalities by donating at www.centreformentalhealth.org.uk/support-us/donate/ or find the link in the notes. See you next time.
