Equity is the answer - exhibit

Health is usually presented to us as a personal choice: choose to live healthier, you’ll live longer and happier. Really?

Research has long shown that social circumstances often overwhelm our choices. This is why more wealth tends to mean better health. Our governments, however, would rather we didn’t think like that. They frame bad health as a result of bad choices. That’s far easier for them and it maintains the status quo.

But we need change. We need to see health as a social issue – to highlight the devastating impact of inequality and challenge the focus on individual choice. That is exactly what this exhibition is about.

This exhibition stems from a project Oli Williams, the Dan
Hill Fellowship in Health Equity Research Associate at the National Institute for Health Research Collaboration for Leadership in Applied Health Research and Care West (NIHR CLAHRC West), developed called ‘Picturing a Thesis’. He explains:

“I started this project shortly after completing my PhD. I wanted to make my research findings as accessible and engaging as possible and so decided to work with partners in the creative industries to translate elements of my thesis into artworks.

“My doctoral research explored relationships between health, place and inequality. I conducted an ethnography in a deprived neighbourhood that highlighted how social factors inhibited the residents’ capacity to adopt a ‘healthy lifestyle’. I presented an argument for reducing health inequalities by addressing the social determinants of health with equitable interventions. It was these arguments that led to me receiving the NIHR CLAHRC West Dan Hill Fellowship in Health Equity.”

More than 50 pieces were submitted to the ‘Picturing a Thesis’ project and 20 have been selected for display in the ‘Equity is the Answer’ exhibition. It’s a public exhibition and there will be a wine reception on the evening. Reproductions of the work and other related items will be sold on the night to raise funds for the social change organisation Edge Fund.

For further details, please visit the exhibition website.