Sleeping Well at Ordsall Hall
Since 2022 we have worked with our partners Ordsall Hall in Salford to deliver a programme of public workshops based on the academic research of the Sleeping Well in the Early Modern World team. This work was funded by the Wellcome Trust. During the first phase of the project, Dr Anna Fielding delivered a series of hands-on workshops with schools, community groups, families and adult learners, together with Ordsall Hall staff and volunteers. You can read more about this phase of the project here and look at some of the activities and events here.
The success of the Wellcome funded project prompted the team to apply for further funding to continue this work. From October 2024 until September 2025, Anna will be working with Ordsall Hall on a new project, funded by the AHRC Impact Acceleration Account at the University of Manchester. This project will build on the findings of the previous project, where many participants noticed that engaging in creative activities in a heritage environment had a positive impact on their wellbeing, which included time spent outside, learning new information and skills, and connecting with the local environment and community.
The new project, called ‘Sleeping Well Creative Health Salford’ will try to find out if learning about historic approaches to wellbeing and sleep through practical creative activities has a positive impact on people’s wellbeing. Anna will design a new series of 6 workshops that will run weekly. The workshops will bring historical approaches to wellbeing to life through craft activities, recipe remaking, gardening, and outdoor learning. We are working with Salford community health sector partners Living Well and Wellbeing Matters Social Prescribing. The programme aims to help Ordsall Hall to become an important centre for wellbeing activities within the heart of Salford. For more information on our work at Ordsall Hall, see https://ordsallhall.com/whats-on/sleeping-well/
The workshops
The workshops will use the research of the Sleeping Well in the Early Modern World project on 16th and 17th century health and medicine, including ideas early modern people had about sleep and the ‘six non-naturals’, a set of influential healthcare guidelines.
Participants will explore Ordsall Hall and its gardens, and explore how the hall’s early residents interacted with their environments to promote sleep and care for their health.
Participants will use creative approaches such as book making, remaking historical culinary and medicinal remedies, paper crafts and candle making to bring this learning to life and create early modern inspired objects to take home.
The first series of workshops will begin in January 2025, with another series running in May 2025.
Groups will meet at Ordsall Hall for two hours per week, running Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, to take part in the project.
The team
Dr Anna Fielding is the Project Officer. She will work with Ordsall Hall and is employed by the University of Manchester.
Professor Sasha Handley is the Project Lead. She leads the project Sleeping Well in the Early Modern World, a Wellcome Trust funded project which explores how people engaged in sleep care practices to safeguard their sleep in the period 1500-1750. The Sleeping Well research project provides the academic research used in this public engagement project.
Caroline Alexander is the Creative Health Lead for Salford Community Leisure (SCL) and works closely with local health sector partners to address wellbeing and emotional health through creative health approaches at SCL and Ordsall Hall.
Eleanor Shaw is the Project Officer for the Sleeping Well in the Early Modern World project. She helps run the project and works with Anna to evaluate and gain ethical approval for the project.
The project will work with local health sector partners Living Well Salford and Wellbeing Matters Social Prescribing to design and recruit participants to the workshops.
