In this episode, Dr Lucy Prodgers and Polite Rebellion's Ellie Harrison join host Yasmeen Soudani from the Leeds Cultural Institute to reflect on Embodying Fatigue, a creative collaboration exploring lived experiences of long-term fatigue. Funded by the Cultural Institute's Ignite programme, the project led to the creation of “fatigue exploration kits” designed to support embodied storytelling and dialogue around chronic fatigue. Lucy and Ellie discuss how their own lived experiences shaped the project, how the kits were conceived, and what they learned from sharing them with patient and public involvement groups, kindly funded by the NIHR Leeds Biomedical Research Centre. Looking ahead, they share their hopes for expanding the work into a larger arts and research initiative.

For project updates, go to: Polite Rebellion or Lucy Prodgers Linkedin.

Fatigue exploration kit credits:

Academic lead: Lucy Prodgers

Artistic lead: Ellie Harrison

Design: Bethany Wells

Photography & access support: Matt Rogers

Funders: University of Leeds Cultural Institute, NIHR Leeds Biomedical Research Centre

Thanks to the Cultural Institute for all of your support, in particular Jo Nockels, for helping Lucy & Ellie find one another, and Yasmeen Soudani for her help with this podcast. To Libby Atkinson, Amy Rebane and the rest of the PPIE team at the Leeds Biomedical Research Centre for helping us get the kits out there and into the right hands. Thanks to all the colleagues, friends and acquaintances who have offered your very helpful feedback and insights. Finally, and most importantly, enormous thanks to the PPIE groups and all those living with fatigue who have explored these kits with us and offered us your wisdom. You are what this project is all about - we hope that together we can begin to forge new possibilities.