Can art-based reflection help us cope with organisational change in the public sector?

Abstract

Never before have public sector jobs been so threatened. Fear and anxiety have shifted their focus, from performance to survival. With reference to immediately contemporary works on the NHS in particular, such as Mandelstam (2011) and Leys and Player (2011), the paper establishes the factual validity of the crisis.The authors conducted a series of workshops for public sector staff to enable them to explore their reactions to the current situation.It is possible to identify increasing levels of denial and other forms of resistance to change similar to those first identified by Menzies' (1959). Drawing on the work of Bion (cited Obholzer & Roberts, 1994) the paper considers the dangers of a retreat to the paranoid schizoid position, and identifies a theoretical clue in Halton (2004) for turning the trauma of change into a creative opportunity.Art has access to emotional, spiritual and creative facets of the human mind that science cannot explore. Klein's (1975) consideration of the infantile and regressive aspect of art is acknowledged. The paper then considers what is revealed by a study of specific works of art which were presented in the workshops; including paintings by Bosch, Rousseau, Breughel and Goya. The work of Zagier-Roberts (1998) and Winnicott (1971) is called upon to endorse the usefulness of such a playful collage of responses.Art can be used to help people move through Kubler Ross' stages of bereavement (1997); not to acceptance but out of the paranoid schizoid position into the depressive position (Klein 1975). Revisiting the work of Halton (2004) and the concept of evolutionary creativity, a move on from the depressive position can begin. Collective validation can be affirmed through a rebooting of the essential public sector values while a radical turning away from organisational priorities, to face the service user, provides a more far reaching optimism than any envisaged by an essentially limited demand for modernisation.In conclusion the paper considers the recent contributions of Dienst (2011) and Dumenil and Levy (2011) to advocate tactical resistance to the denigration of the public sphere.