Health Chronicles is a unique healthcare platform that uses processes of storytelling and self-reflection to produce new ways of understanding health within a comprehensive personal narrative. Located in the Bemerton Council Estate in Islington, the project is being developed with the nearby Bingfield Street Surgery.

 

While health is a personal matter, healthcare is often impersonal. Patients may feel detached from their own health and body, particularly in a context where illness is commonly treated with medication. The relationship between daily life and health is often overlooked; GP consultations are frequently brief and focused on physical matters. Health Chronicles provides an alternative: utilising narrative equipment instead of medical equipment and providing a welcoming environment wherein participants can convert their personal health histories into tangible and understandable visual stories. 

 

The project encourages people to become actively involved in their own health by developing a better understanding of the relationships between their lifestyle and their physical and mental wellbeing. This will empower people to make decisions about the way they live. Starting from one particular medical issue, the story is expanded to incorporate the patient’s lifestyle and environment, visualising a world around the physical symptoms which show their connections to daily life.