Letter To My Kidney and Out Like Fudge: Bringing Research To Life
October 2021
As a development of our Little Whispers project, in collaboration with Barny Hole and Lucy Plumb, we presented at UK Kidney week, with a poster and a video ‘Reporting of health inequalities by the UK Renal Registry’ event.
June 2021
Barny Hole, Clinician Lucy Plumb are cooking up an exciting development for our Letter to My Kidney Project.
And what lovely feedback to receive online….
May 2021
Delighted to announce that our play ‘Out Like Fudge’ will be translated and performed in Denmark in November 2021 (postponed from last year due to Covid)
Out Like Fudge is a short play/vignette, which was shown at a nephrology (kidney) conference at Bristol Wills building last December. In the audience was Jeanette Finderup, Klinisk Sygeplejespecialist & Ph.d. Jeanette liked it and is having it translated for her conference.
Described as ‘Hard hitting’, by another conference attendee, ‘Out Like Fudge’ is one of two short plays Elspeth wrote for clinician and Phd candidate Barny Hole in Autumn 2019, based on kidney patients. Much of it is verbatim, as it’s based on spoken interviews that Barny recorded and transcribed, as part of his PhD. The story features Fudge, a pet who died quite suddenly: our character Jo would like to leave the earth in a similar way.
The play is called: Ikke mere udenomsnak in Danish. Conference organiser Jeanette Finderup says: “We were not able to make a direct translation, but the Danish title indicate, that now we do not talk around the subject anymore.”
If Covid-19 travel permissions and clinical work commitments allow for it, Elspeth will do a short introduction of the play and Barny will present a lecture for one hour with the title: Hvad må det koste at leve længere for en patient i dialyse? “The title says something like: How much will a patient in dialysis pay to live longer?”
Dec 2020
2BU Production’s work has developed with Barny Hole, taking letters into a clinical setting. We have been commissioned by Futures2020, (and funded by the European Commission) to run “Letter to my Kidney”, a participatory project and development of our letter writing initiative. Along with clinician/researcher Barny Hole, we have been working with kidney patients: older people, children, donors, patients on dialysis and a clinician. Using the old-fashioned communication methods of phone calls and letter writing in a world where zoom currently rules, we asked for a simple letter to start with, then as participants got used to the idea, we sent them art packs to help them create a series of Letters to my Kidney/s. We find the results touching and illuminating – available until 11th December https://futures2020.co.uk/futures-exhibits/
Or you can view our trailer here: Letter to My Kidney
March 2020
News off the press for … our play ‘Out Like Fudge’ will be translated and performed in Denmark in November 2021.
The project started when Clinician Barny Hole of Bristol University had a hunch that drama might be a good approach to help with public engagement around his PhD subject. Elspeth was recommended to Barny on the grapevine, and asked her to write and direct the work. In the early meetings, we agreed that humour was important, even through the humour might be dark. Also we wanted to stay true to the people in the interviews, whilst protecting their identities and fictionalising elements to make it into an easier story to follow.
We’ve performed it on two occasions, enabling both a PPI group, then clinicians and conference delegates at #dialysisbalance to reflect, and consider dilemmas about medical procedures from the point of view of a patient. Thanks to Jo, Karen, @ChrisPirie and Bede for their sensitive script-reading skills #dialysisbalance #bringresearchtolife #elizabethbackwellinstitute funded.
Feedback after December dialysis conference:
“I thought it was very well done, and I liked that the actors spoke the words from interviews – it was a clever idea”
“The words were impactful and very sad”
“I do like different ways of communicating messages this certainly got across some key points form real life experiences”
“The revelation that all the words came from real people facing ESKD decisions was powerful”
“very involved. Has left a significant mark on me as to how many patients must feel when they are told dialysis is required”
“So powerful”
“Slightly shocked by some of the language – it is hard-hitting but a really good way of getting insight through drama”
“I’m a GP… it was thought provoking, challenging of traditional approaches both in care but also conference content. I really valued that”
