15. #WildObs - Gill n #FabObs Flo - Christmas Special 2021

Welcome to WildObs – A Mash-up of  'The Obs Pod' and  'Wild Card - Whose Shoes' podcasts as a 2021  Christmas special !!
#MatExp co-founders Gill Phillips, creator of 'Whose Shoes' and my good friend #FabObs Florence Wilcock, chatting about our advent / musical adventures over the years.
 
🍋💡🍋 CROWDSOURCED FILMS

#MindNBody Advent videos, 2018 – perinatal mental health
Crowdsourced videos made by a diverse range of fab people who were involved in the #MatExp MindNBody project - developing new Whose Shoes resources to promote a holistic approach to perinatal mental health.

 Whose Shoes - Advent 2020
A diverse mix of people - NHS, community, everyone, contributing daily videos to showcase  good stuff people have been doing to  help others during the pandemic.

 #MatExp comes to NHS Expo 2016 – ends with #MatExp RAP
 #MatExp the Musical

STELLER STORIES
2015-2017 Advent stories
#MatExpAdvent-ures!
Santa baby – advent story
#MatExpAdvent 2019
#MindNBody
Nobody’s Patient

The Obs Pod – episodes mentioned:
 Working on a maternity unit over the festive period – Episode 36
Magic Mates - Episode 67
Chat with Jennythe M - Episode 77

‘Wild Card – Whose Shoes’ episodes mentioned:
Leanne Howlett - peer support in perinatal mental health Episode 4
Dr Terri Porrett - Fab NHS Stuff Episode 12
Dr Farzana Hussain, our Father Christmas! Episode 2

 Other:
The Great Realisation | Tomfoolery
Jingle bells clip – little girl
Shine and By Your Side

We LOVE it when you leave a review!
If you enjoy my podcast and find these conversations useful
please  share your thoughts by leaving a review (Spotify or Apple are easiest to leave a review - navigate via 3 dots) and comment on your favourite episodes.

Connect with me - Gill Phillips - on LinkedIn, especially if you are interested in our brand new #CYPWhoseShoes resources or our well-established #MatExp (maternity experience) work.

I tweet (not so much these days!) as @WhoseShoes  and am on Instagram as @WhoseShoesUK and @WildCardWS.

Please recommend 'Wild Card - Whose Shoes' to others who enjoy hearing passionate people talk about their experiences of improving health care. 

Transcript

Gill Phillips  00:11

My name is Gill Phillips and I'm the creator of Whose Shoes, a popular approach to coproduction. I was named as an HSJ 100 Wild Card, and want to help give a voice to others talking about their ideas and experiences. I'll be chatting with people from all sorts of different perspectives, walking in their shoes. If you are interested in the future of health care, and like to hear what other people think, or perhaps even contribute at some point, Whose Shoes Wild Card is for you.

Gill Phillips  00:45

So today, we have a Christmas special, and who else would I want to do this with, but my fantastic friend, #FabObs Flo,, Florence Wilcock, I can't believe I've waited until episode 15 to bring Flo onto the Wild Card Whose Shoes podcast although we have heard snippets of her voice in earlier episodes, Flo is my very much a Wild Card, obstetrician friend who along with Kath Evans was responsible for bringing Whose Shoes into the world of maternity care. And back in 2014, Flo co founded the MatExp, that's maternity experience, social movement with me, we quickly became magic mates.

Florence Wilcock  01:26

So we put our heads together. And we've come up with a festive special called WildObs because it's a mash up of Wild Card Whose Shoes and the ObsPod. And we're hoping very much that you're going to enjoy this festive edition, which has a little bit of music, and a lot of mischief. I can't believe actually looking back that we've been at this for seven years now. So we met back in 2014. And we'd met virtually. And when we met in person for the first time face to face, I remember throwing my arms around you for a hug because it just seemed right even though we hadn't actually ever met in real life. And yeah, we've just had so much fun. And I think that's a bit what we're hoping to share today is some of the the more creative, fabulous stuff that we've done over the years. Some of it Christmassy or festive.

Gill Phillips  02:27

And we've actually recorded an episode together for your podcast, our Magic Mates episode.

Florence Wilcock  02:32

Yes. So if people want to go back and hear a bit more depth, Episode  67 Magic Mates is where to go back and start.

Gill Phillips  02:41

It's been quite a story hasn't it?

Florence Wilcock  02:43

.It has.

Gill Phillips  02:44

So today we've got a music theme is this right Flo? A music themed maternity special.

Florence Wilcock  02:50

Yeah. So I was very inspired by your episode, the pandemic poems episode. I just thought that was so brilliant and so creative to just have an episode like that that sort of flowed. And I love the poems. And it made me think in the run up to ooh, what should I do this year, because last year, I talked all about working on labour ward over Christmas, I thought , Oh, I could do poems and music. So, I messaged you, and you'd had exactly the same idea. And it was just one of those things of aha, we need to do something together. And that's kind of how this whole journey starts, really, because I remember getting a train with you. And this was back in 2015, when I've looked it up. And I think we were on the way back from a Birth Tank stakeholder event.

Gill Phillips  03:46

That's a fantastic name.

Florence Wilcock  03:48

Now birth tank was a very serious part of the national maternity review. And they were at the point where they hadn't completed the review. But they were starting to think and synthesise what their recommendations might be. And they had an event in Birmingham to sort of test things out a bit and float a few ideas at us. And we happened to be there, along with quite a few of our gang of the #MatExp community. And on the way back on the train, you said to me, oh, I want to show you Steller stories. Now. As you know, I'm a bit of a social media novice, and you usually get me into trouble by making me join all sorts of platforms.

Gill Phillips  04:33

Oh, but it's been fun.

Florence Wilcock  04:34

It has been fun. But you are saying, Oh, look, look at these. These are Steller stories. You can write little stories. This is a really good way of communicating with people. And as soon as you showed it to me, because you turn a page, a virtual page. It immediately made me think because this was being held in November made me think, Oh, that would be amazing. We could do #MatExp advent calendar. And my initial thought was literally, you would have the date, and whatever it was, and you would turn a single page and there would be something inside the door, like an advent calendar. However, it didn't really end up like, it ended up with us spending between us the whole month writing ever more complicated stories, which were sometimes 20 or 30 pages long on a theme, and getting, I would say ever more wild and wacky. I don't know what you think. And we alternated. So I can't remember if I was odd numbers and you were even or the other way round.

Gill Phillips  05:47

We mixed it up a little bit bit but something like that. I think you had … what do snowflakes and birth have in common?

Florence Wilcock  05:53

Oh, yes, that's right. Because snowflakes are completely unique. Each one is totally different. And that is exactly like birth, no birth is going to be the same as another birth. They're all individual. Yes. And I remember doing one about crackers as well. Christmas crackers. That's right, because I was talking about language. And if you Google crackers, you've got cheese crackers, and you've got Christmas crackers. Yeah, what do we mean by crackers? Yeah, I think it just kind of … my brain ran away with me a bit. And I do remember my husband and family getting more and more frustrated as I spent longer and longer collecting pictures of strange things and pulling a story together each day.

Gill Phillips  06:40

But the theme was just so incredible and one of mine was the three wise men, or indeed women who bring practical presents for the new baby . So I don't know how many people want myrrh or frankincense. But these are actual maternity care gifts for the new baby. So we were using our Christmas stories to weave in learning in terms of maternity care. So I think the three gifts were optimal cord clamping, weight to weigh. And of course, skin to skin inspired by the fantastic Jenny, the midwife. I mean, obviously Flo, you can tell us more about those and why they're important.

Florence Wilcock  07:18

Waiting for weighing is not whipping the baby away  straightaway and doing all the tasks that we need to do so weighing the baby, doing its baby check and giving it vitamin K, but leaving it in contact with the mum, which also goes with that idea of uninterrupted skin to skin, in theatre, or in any birth room. And optimal cord clamping is about the baby getting the blood from the umbilical cord because the blood in the umbilical cord is the baby's blood. And if you cut and clamp the umbilical cord immediately, that baby's losing quite a significant amount of its blood volume.

Gill Phillips  07:59

So those were quite significant, as I remember #MatExp campaigns at the time. Do you think that that's changed? Now when we're looking back, what, six, seven years later? Do you think some of those things are more commonplace now?

Florence Wilcock  08:11

Yeah, I think we're part of the way on the journey rather than the whole way. So I certainly think skin to skin in theatre is much more commonplace. And certainly, we routinely now leave the umbilical cord for at least a minute before we clamp and cut it at Caesarean for example than what we were doing back then, which was immediate cutting and clamping. So I think we are evolving. But I would say we've still got a way to go. But yes, it's really encouraging to look back and see some of the practice changes that have happened.

Gill Phillips  08:48

And to think that our #MatExp advent stories might have contributed to that. Because certainly they're fun. I think that's what we try and do through our maverick stuff together, isn't it because they're fun, then lots of people actually look at them, read them. And then that starts to influence.

Florence Wilcock  09:03

Yeah. And it's about waking up a conversation, isn't it? And if something's attractive and interesting and engaging, people say to their friends, oh, have you seen this? And, oh, maybe I could contribute to this and jump in and change my practice. So yeah. And I think for both of us, our podcasts are kind of the next iteration of that, aren't they, in terms of trying to draw people in and give them ideas and energise people?

Gill Phillips  09:31

Exactly. And I think at that time, obviously, it was all evolving. So we started to pull in some of our we've talked about our MatExp gang, so obviously other clinicians , but the women, the mum leaders really and Helen Calvert was a force to be reckoned with, and I couldn't tweet without putting the little wild horses emoji next to Helen. And she was the one that set up our MatExp Facebook group, which is still going strong with I think about 4500 members So I remember giving a challenge to Helen, that perhaps she could get her mum friends to do a rendition of Santa Baby. And I remember it was tricky because I wanted to make it into our final Steller story. And a limitation or rule of a Steller story is that if you have a video it can only be 15 seconds. So I remember writing this different version of Santa Baby especially for #MatExp and Helen getting different ones of her friends to read the different verses, and a couple of them came back at about 16-17 seconds, it was really difficult. Let's play a clip.

Other  10:37

(Plays Santa Baby) 

Florence Wilcock  11:08

For me, that is my favourite story. And literally, it has stayed with me. So any time I'm Christmas shopping, and I hear Santa baby the music. Literally in my head. All I hear is Santa baby put it in the sack for #MatExp And that's all I hear. And I don't know, I don't even know what the actual lyrics of the song are? No. Because that is the version and it literally I have it on the brain at this time of year. And so when I was initially thinking about doing the ObsPod special with some music and poems, that was immediately the thing, I thought we absolutely have to put that in

Gill Phillips  11:55

Brilliant. Yeah. And I'm conscious as well that obviously we're describing some highly visual stuff. I mean, all these mums singing under their Christmas trees with Christmas hats and so on. But we can each in our joint podcasts put these links in our programme notes can’t we so that people can read the stories or see the little videos if it's something more visual.

Florence Wilcock  12:15

Yeah, totally something to explore.

Gill Phillips  12:18

So moving on then, that the #MatExp Advent series gave us a fantastic foundation. Where are we up to now? We're still quite early on, we were just about to enter the NHS England #MatExp challenge fund, and to bid for and successfully run our Nobody’ Patient Project and building on lots of connections and so on.

Florence Wilcock  12:39

Yes, so as you say, we had gathered quite a gang of incredible women predominantly around us, who had a real passion for trying to improve maternity care, in genuine coproduction with midwives, obstetricians and anaesthetists, and so on. And the National maternity review had been published. And they'd put out this MatExp Challenge fund, and we'd put together a really good coproduction bid, and won some money to run this project. We were one of three projects up and down the country. And I think, the reason it's called Nobody's Patient is because it was about women falling between gaps in services. And I feel probably we're going to need to do a whole Nobody's Patient podcast episode on its own merit, because it certainly is a huge topic. But essentially, we were looking at care of babies that were in the neonatal unit, women that were severely ill during pregnancy unexpectedly, and women with second trimester loss, so who perhaps fell between gynaecology and maternity services. And as one of the three successful projects, we were invited to Expo NHS, the big, once a year conference, and we were in quite a small little side room. It was quite disappointing, I think, in that it was a huge conference centre in Manchester. And we were thrilled to be there and be part of the conversation. And we had a very short space of time to do anything.

Other  14:28

We were the fringe act, weren’t we.

Florence Wilcock  14:30

Yeah.

Gill Phillips  14:31

So we were now at Expo in 2016. But that was actually a step up. Let's come back to 2016 Flo. Do you remember the previous year when we had no space at all? But of course, we wanted to get the message of #MatExp out there and ended up attracting interest by juggling lemons and things in the cafe area.

Florence Wilcock  14:54

Yeah, we commandeered a table

Gill Phillips  14:56

Because we couldn't afford the £10,000 pound stand.

Florence Wilcock  15:00

And we got a load of lemons. And we were a bit rogue. We went round sticking MatExp stickers on people

Gill Phillips  15:09

on the good and the great.

Florence Wilcock  15:10

Yes. And we had T shirts  that said ‘Ask me about MatExp’

Gill Phillips  15:15

And it was incredibly exciting because there were all the big expensive official stands there. And our table in the coffee area was just the board game, some leaflets, some stickers. And I think virtually we stuck a few stickers on people as well who didn't actually have one at the real event. So that was the previous year. And I think by now we've got a bit of a bigger space. But I remember on Twitter, we were given less and less time. I think originally we were offered like 20 minutes. And then it was … this was Sarah Jane Marsh, the maternity transformation lead who really I think values what we do, but it was “I'm really sorry, Gill and Flo, you've only got 15 minutes. And then we ended up with seven and a half minutes. And she said, can you go with that?. And then she threw in at the end a challenge to do a MatExp RAP as part of it. So I remember at the actual event, people were expecting someone to come up and stand at the front and do a PowerPoint presentation. And we used our seven and a half minutes to get women sitting around the room amongst the audience, which was perhaps 200 people to read a Whose Shoes poem. And it definitely made a big impact.

Florence Wilcock  16:27

It certainly did. I remember people being a bit stunned when perhaps the person next to them in the audience popped up and read a poem.

Gill Phillips  16:35

Because people expect certain things at NHS conferences. And this was starting to be bolder and very different, I think. I think that made us a lot bolder actually. And I remember doing an outrageous tweet, it really was saying that next year, we deserve to be on the main stage. In fact, we were going to have ‘MatExp the Musical’. Yeah, remember, I think in my head seriously, I had like a West End musical production in mind. It was quite crazy. And then the story kind of grew from there.

Florence Wilcock  17:07

Yeah. But before we talk about that, we need to introduce the RAP.

Gill Phillips  17:12

We do.

Florence Wilcock  17:13

Because actually, first of all, before we gambled and threw our hat into the mainstage, we rose to the challenge that Sarah Jane had set us, I say we in the royal we sense I had nothing to do with this at all. But our wonderful mum singers who’d done the brilliant Santa baby came up with a RAP. They were like, yeah, she wants to rap, we'll do a rap.

Gill Phillips  17:40

And I’d given them like 25 seconds maximum. And they came back with it, including the credits of the women's names coming up at the end. It was awesome.

Other  17:55

(Plays #MatExp RAP)

Florence Wilcock  18:15

 So having done 24 Steller stories, in 2015, for Advent, what to do when 2016 rolled around? Well, we weren't going to do it all again. Because actually, it was a mammoth task. But we'd laid an amazing foundation that we could build on and a lot had happened during 2016. So if you go and explore the Steller stories, what you'll find is there are the original stories from 2015. And then at the back of them, we've put some additional pages. So we gave a bit of an update in 2016 on each topic about what new things that happened or what new connections we've made, or who else had jumped on board and done the same thing and how things had developed. So the stories in themselves tell you a little bit of a chronological story of each of those different improvement topics over a couple of years, rather than being just as we left them back in 2015.

Gill Phillips  19:17

And how fantastic to think of all that's happened since because that update itself was five years ago now.

Florence Wilcock  19:23

Yeah. So Gill, you were saying you kind of threw it out there #MatExp the musical the main stage. And I do remember we had quite a lot of Twitter traffic and joking about it back and forth with Sarah Jane and various other people, then I can't remember at what point in the year she contacted us and when she'd bagged the main stage. And I remember thinking, oh my god, what have we done?

Gill Phillips  19:57

And she hadn't actually bagged the main stage, I think it's important to point ,out, for #MatExp the musical, it wasn't called that

Florence Wilcock  20:05

No, it was the maternity transformation. Very serious…

Gill Phillips  20:09

Programme board programme.

Florence Wilcock  20:11

Yeah.

Gill Phillips  20:12

So it morphed into #MatExp the musical didn't it?  I remember, there was a phone call with Sarah Jane Marsh and some of the NHS England people asking us to add some of our MatExp magic, do you remember that?

Florence Wilcock  20:23

I do. And most of what I remember about the preparation for this was you and me taking the card sets and scenarios and poems and trying to theme them against the recommendations in the national maternity review and the actions that we knew were taking place up and down the country. And I've still got on my phone, I think photos, because the quickest way was for us to take a photo of stuff laid out all over the floor, and send it to one another and compare notes about which ones we've selected and what this was versus that, and an awful lot of planning. And I definitely think you did the heavy lifting with this one. I think I was a bit Oh, my God, like we've just gone too far. I Yeah. And I think you bore the brunt of this, not least, because I was also presenting in a different conference in a different city on the same day as well.

Gill Phillips  21:26

That's right, you literally came from one to the other, didn't you?

Florence Wilcock  21:29

I did a mad dash

Gill Phillips  21:30

And I remember having a room of my house just taken over by this great long. If you can imagine it visually post-it notes all around the different themes , there were about seven themes of Better Births. And we were literally trying to tell the story, and we got so many different layers of it. So it was what the Better Births story was. And then we were being really quite, I think hard hitting in terms of … there were the early adopter groups, there was the MatExp movement, our people, vanguard sites, choice pioneers. But we were really trying to pick out actual actions that were happening. And I remember having post it notes that colour coded them accordingly. It didn't matter who was doing it. But we were trying to demonstrate that you don't have to be part of a formal system to make a difference. And lots and lots of fantastic actions were coming through the MatExp movement, as well as the official channels if you like. So I remember having what the story was in terms of  Better Births, and then trying to match it with actual best practice. And then alongside that, to drop in Whose Shoes scenarios and poems that would bring that particular aspect alive. And again, to use the same idea of people popping up in the main audience. Now this was huge by this stage, it was going to be actually on the main stage at Expo. And it was the penultimate spot just before it was going to be the Health Minister. So you got a lot of people coming in into our session, not necessarily that interested in maternity, but who were getting themselves and their laptops, and so on into place ready to hear the big one at the end of the conference. So again, planting people around the audience, but in terms of logistics, passing microphones, and so on about and trying to set it up by then in terms of the actual musical element. So we've got our fantastic music therapist colleagues coming up from Chelsea and Westminster, and bringing their travel guitars to have a rehearsal and trying to set up a piano next to the main stage of Expo, which they didn't normally have

Florence Wilcock  23:41

Funny that there's no piano, an NHS conference, why not?

Gill Phillips  23:48

And then crowdsourcing of it in terms of trying to involve people who would be there anyway, so that we weren't incurring extra expense bringing people especially and I remember one particular challenge that I took on personally was trying to get a crowdsourced piano within Manchester because I thought, for goodness sake, we're going to put this on the mainstage at Expo, there's got to be a kind of win-win reciprocity. And we got Forsyth, the local I think 150 year old music shop, gave us a bigger and better version of their piano because it had their Forsyth logo bigger on the back of it. That's a lot of what we do compared with just a standard approach to things I think,

Florence Wilcock  24:28

Yeah, I think #MatExp the musical. When I look back on it was an incredible labour of love. It took an enormous amount of time and energy from so many people. I mean, I think we had a group of about 30 of us in the end, and I've still got that photo from that day as my profile header, and I think it was very ambitious. And it was a real example of what Helen Bevan would call new power versus old power. And I think it was, I wasn't sure they were quite ready for us. But it's still one of the things that I am most proud of us having achieved, actually to be on the mainstage at EXPO with a crowdsourced, truly coproduced event showcasing such great work happening up and down the country and maternity. I also remember going back to your idea of a full on West End musical, that we had to be really careful choosing what music because of copyright

Gill Phillips  25:48

that's right.

Florence Wilcock  25:49

And that lots of the things that we wanted to use, were out of our grasp. So we settled for good ol Twinkle, twinkle, didn't we?

Gill Phillips  25:59

We did. And then obviously some of the subject areas that we were covering, because we were using this music to make the Better Births song and an incredible amount of time and trouble went into making sure that it wasn't trivialised, that the actual words and the story was being told in a really sensitive way, with some very appropriate people contributing to the words and the lyrics. And obviously with the skill of people like Claire Flower and Grace Meadows who were our music therapists and used to using music in imaginative ways. It certainly didn't just happen, it was a labour of love. And I know I found it particularly difficult because it was the summer my Mum died so I was obviously looking after her. And, you know, people have got like personal stories as a backdrop to these things. But it was just such a big thing to do. And the pride with which … when I think it was kind of accidentally in inverted commas, we hadn't heard that we were meant to go in front of the main stage people, had been sitting in the audience and at the end, people with all their colour coded #MatExp sashes. So we've got the four colours of Whose Shoes, clinicians, people with more formal power, the women and families and the creatives and so on. So we've got red, blue, yellow and green sashes with everyone from literally a Baroness. So fantastic Baroness Cumberlege  was there with us going up onto the main stage. And perhaps I shouldn't mention who ‘accidentally’ went up on the stage rather than along the front of the stage. But it made it much more colourful and much more memorable, I'd say.

Gill Phillips  26:45

Yeah, I think it was, it was fantastic.

Gill Phillips  27:07

So we've got two clips of music to play from #MatExp the musical, one is a clip of what we've just been talking about, in terms of that gang of people coming up on the stage. And then the other one is Jenny, the midwife doing her RAP. So let’s play the first clip and come back after the first clip and tell the story a little bit more about Jenny's rap.

Other  28:07

(Music plays )

Florence Wilcock  28:36

And talking about how sensitively and carefully we had to plan things, that afterwards it was so lovely that we got some feedback from people in the audience who said we'd pitched it exactly right. And exactly how they felt it kind of captured the important work of the maternity transformation programme and, and really was how the future and coproduction should be rather than the perhaps lip service it can sometimes be.

Gill Phillips  29:14

And that meant such a lot.

Florence Wilcock  29:16

It did. It really did.

Gill Phillips  29:18

Because that included people with perinatal mental health problems, bereaved parents, it was a very difficult path to tread. And to try and get it to land just right was risky wasn't it

Florence Wilcock  29:32

It was, it certainly was

Gill Phillips  29:33

So that feedback was amazing and very, very much appreciated.

Florence Wilcock  29:37

Yeah, yeah. Fantastic. Jenny the M and her amazing skin to skin RAP. I mean, where to start really?

Gill Phillips  29:47

How many people get on the mainstage of Expo and do RAP rap about skin to skin … with boots and cats?

Florence Wilcock  29:54

Probably Jenny and no one else Yeah, she's daring. She's courageous. She's a midwife like no other. And yeah, I'm sure you're going to have her on your podcast, but I've beaten you to it. Yeah, I've had her on mine. And it was a joy. And she talked about being inspired, actually by people being quite nasty to her and her being well I'm going to fight for this because I know this is right for women and babies and families. And yes, you know, she's been passionate about skin to skin and she wrote a RAP and she performed her RAP.

Gill Phillips  30:40

It was amazing. Really was

Florence Wilcock  30:42

Yeah. As is she.

Other  31:08

(Play’s Jenny the Midwife’s RAP).

Florence Wilcock  31:42

So in 2017 in November, we ran some Picker sessions. So this was for me like everything coming full circle because all my work with maternity experience, it started with the National CQC maternity survey. And for about half the organisations in the country, this is undertaken by Picker. And Picker asked us to run some sessions for them reviewing the results of their survey. And we did two sessions, one in London and one in Leeds. And that gave us an opportunity to gather together all sorts of #MatExp people from across the country. So we had people from Leeds, Barnsley, Lewisham and Greenwich. And we were trying to inspire people how they might act on their CQC national maternity survey results. By 2018. Our next big project #MindNBody was coming together and underway. Gill, I don't know if you want to talk a little bit about #MindNBody as a project.

Gill Phillips  32:50

Yeah I think #MindNBody had been waiting to happen all the way through the work that we’d done so far. So we’d done the original generic maternity project. And then it had developed very naturally into Nobody's Patient starting to look at people sadly falling through gaps between services. And obviously perinatal mental health runs through all of that. So I think we found that we had got quite a lot of already good Whose Shoes material touching on that subject. But there was a need. And so many people were mentioning this to us to do a bespoke module around perinatal mental health. And it was Louise Page who … Louise is in London, she's an obstetrician in London and was doing a project specifically around perinatal mental health. And she pretty much said to me, Gill, we need to do some Whose Shoes work. And at that point Whose Shoes MatExp was growing by then I was able to say to her, well look, other people are saying the same thing. Let's see if we can bring them in to the main project to make it bigger and more comprehensive. And behind the scenes as we were developing the new Whose Shoes resources, we were able to provide them through the project back to the people who were already using the original resources if they wanted them. Yeah. So really, through my networks, we managed to bring in the Southwest Regional team, who had just been fantastic with Whose Shoes and had some very, very powerful and quite a large number of events. And then my local network, which was the West Midlands network. And that made it very, very interesting because we were able to do three very different types of events with the three areas and to test out things and obviously, the issues in inner city London or Birmingham might be very different from perhaps some of the rural areas in Cornwall, or equally in parts like Shropshire of the West Midlands and to bring in perhaps military communities, rural communities, fishing communities, there were so many different aspects to it. So again, I think we could do a whole new podcast around #MindNBody but in terms of the development of the #MatExp story, that was happening at this stage in 2018.

Florence Wilcock  35:02

it was and so we decided to do #MindNBody Advent. So it had its own hashtag. And you really pulled this together, an incredible set of videos of all sorts of people talking about all sorts of aspects of perinatal mental health, and how to improve it. And through that project as part of the journey, we started to come across all sorts of creative ideas, didn't we for how to help your mental health and well being whether that's during pregnancy or as a new parent? I don't know if you want to share some of the examples.

Gill Phillips  35:48

This is going to be a bit of an epic Flo. Why don't we take a break and play Claire playing on the postnatal ward, this is Claire Flower. She's one of our music therapist, friends who came and played the piano for us at #MatExp the musical but it's just a lovely little clip, isn't it of Claire playing the piano? Is it Jingle Bells?

Florence Wilcock  36:07

Yes,

Gill Phillips  36:08

With a little girl singing with her and it's just magic

Florence Wilcock  36:12

It is delightful 

Other  36:33

(Jingle Bells).

Gill Phillips  36:59

So that's an example of creativity, and we were finding so many. Coming forward during our #MindNBody work were people like Lauraine Cheesman in Gloucestershire, doing fantastic arts and craft work through her Shine project. My friend Leanne Howlett, in Warwickshire, was running an amazing outdoor festival and a community walk to raise awareness of perinatal mental health. I think we're mentioning these kinds of examples because creative means can really bring in new people and raise awareness, rather than more traditional just a report about something, which is obviously terribly important, but it's not necessarily reaching the public and the people that matter.

Florence Wilcock  37:39

Yeah, and it comes back to that idea of social prescribing, in terms of what we were talking about. The whole ethos of the project was mind and body, treating the whole person. And considering what's important to that whole person, not just thinking about the physical illness or problems associated with pregnancy and new parenthood, but actually treating people as people. And that going for a walk or doing some art therapy or playing some music is as important as perhaps giving a blood pressure tablet or something that we might see as more traditional treatment.

Gill Phillips  38:24

And one of the other musical stories that I loved at the time was Music While You Wait. Can you tell us about that one Flo?

Florence Wilcock  38:31

So this was Claire with the violin lady, which was an amazing story. I think it happened at the Chelsea and Westminster workshop and I can't remember what year that was held. But it was a postnatal workshop, and the story was that this woman was sitting in the waiting room. I think it was the diabetic antenatal clinic so she was coming for lots of appointments, it’s very onerous, having diabetes in pregnancy, have an awful lot of check-ups and she was in the waiting room, sitting waiting and listening to Claire play on her keyboard. Now this woman used to play the violin. And coming week in, week out and hearing this music playing in the waiting room, and you know, this really quite difficult situation she was in, with pregnancy with a complication, made her bring her violin to one of her appointments and get it out and play it with Claire. And for me, this really spoke to me because when I was young, I played the violin. I spent many, many hours playing my violin and playing in youth orchestras and things like that. And I hadn't played my violin for years and years and years. So when I heard this story, I really empathised, I thought oh my god, that really could have been me. And when we held the workshop, she came and played her violin with Claire at the workshop.

Gill Phillips  40:06

That's just so lovely.

Florence Wilcock  40:07

And we've got a snippet of that.

Gill Phillips  40:09

Oh, and I've remembered she had a beautiful name, Florica.

Other  40:12

(Music clip - Florida and Claire)

Florence Wilcock  40:29

And funnily enough, since all that happened, and we've been in the pandemic, one of the things I've done in the last year while we've all been locked away in our houses unable to do anything is get out my violin

Gill Phillips  40:44

Oh, have you?

Florence Wilcock  40:44

… that I had not played for about 20 or more years, and play my violin.

Gill Phillips  40:53

Do you know I've got a violin as well that I haven't played for more years than that…

Florence Wilcock  40:56

Oh, Gill, we could play a duet!!

Gill Phillips  40:58

I think you rather better than me.

Florence Wilcock  41:05

That can be next year's festive special if we do some practice between now and then

Gill Phillips  41:09

A lot of practice. That would be funny.

Florence Wilcock  41:13

Excellent. So now we've reached 2019. Bear with us everybody. Don't worry, this story will end. 2019 was an epic year because we went to a Lemon Festival together, which again will be a whole nother episode. But given we have fun with lemons and people on Twitter know we have fun with lemons. Someone, I think it might have been Zoe, Ads the Poet's mom, I think she might have pointed us in the direction of the fact that there's an actual Lemon Festival in Menton.

Gill Phillips  41:48

In its 86th year!

Florence Wilcock  41:50

In its 86th year, sorry, in Menton in the South of France. And so we went for a completely unbelievable lemon-themed weekend together.

Florence Wilcock  42:02

Very surreal.

Florence Wilcock  42:04

Which is one of the most special trips of my entire life.

Florence Wilcock  42:08

Yeah, and me.

Florence Wilcock  42:09

It was, it was incredible. So we carried on with our creative, slightly wacky ideas.

Florence Wilcock  42:16

With even more lemons.

Florence Wilcock  42:17

With even more lemons. And the lemons definitely made it into the Advent series that year. And Gill started a MatExp Advent series that year, with shoutouts to people who were providing support for all sorts of different people. And she kicked it off December the first with our wonderful music therapy friends at Chelsea and Westminster and referred back to Music Whilst You Wait.

Gill Phillips  42:52

So that was the music clip we just heard. So it's all coming together, almost as if it was planned.

Florence Wilcock  42:59

So 2020 Wow.

Gill Phillips  43:04

Oh, the pandemic hit.

Florence Wilcock  43:07

Oh, the pandemic, Oh, if only it was over.

Gill Phillips  43:13

I know.

Florence Wilcock  43:13

And that was a mega challenge. Because all the work we've done was all these amazing face-to-face workshops with 50 to 70 people in a room and unbelievable relationship building and connections and fun and cake and just very much human relationship-based improvement and play, playing a game at the bottom of all this. So the pandemic was a bit tricky, wasn't it?

Gill Phillips  43:47

And I guess the big challenge was whether we could, should try and take Whose Shoes online because just as you've said, to be honest, I was quite reluctant because I thought it was about cake and bunting and being able to give people a hug and look around the room and read people's mood and so on. But Anna and Carrie the graphic artists were very keen, quickly adapted their methodology so that it was just as good as in the room with studio lighting and clever ability to flip cameras around and being able to talk through the graphic records that they produce to capture the conversations, and Mr. Whose Shoes came to the party. He is a proper IT man and took it as quite a challenge. And before we knew it, we were bringing the board game online, we were throwing the dice, we were linking it to our database, and to be honest with things like OBS software and stuff that I'd never heard of, we were ahead of the game, I think, in terms of some really interactive and quite special Zoom sessions. So again, that's a whole separate podcast, possibly, virtual Whose Shoes, but it meant that generally we could keep our work going and in terms of maternity, we were able to do some really difficult workshops with big themes like Continuity of Carer, topics that maternity teams needed to embrace, and proper Whose Shoes territory in terms of how it affected different people, the staff, the women, the midwives, people who want to work part time, you know, whatever it might be. And we ran virtual workshops with Shrewsbury and Telford, for example. And also the East Kent maternity teams. And we did some pretty creative stuff, didn't we Flo and you got involved in both of those. It was brilliant.

Florence Wilcock  45:39

We did and one of the sessions was, again, just before Christmas, and we were having a bit of our kind of normal brainstorming, and I was looking around my office at home for inspiration. And I've got an ABC of birth on the wall. And we suddenly thought a bit like our Advent Calendar idea, but we were doing alphabet and ABC, but it would be a Christmassy festive ABC of birth. But then being us it wasn't going to be as simple as you know, 'A' is for Apple, because I mean, why would it be. So we had elves, 'E' is for elves. And that was actually about perineal stitching, stitching after you've had the baby. Because, to me, that meant the Elves and the Shoemaker fairy story. So we had some slightly cryptic things on our alphabet. And the other thing we decided to do was, we only filled up a few random letters. And then we gave a challenge, didn't we, to the organisation we were working with and said, Well, there you go, here's your starter for 10. Up to you to complete the festive MatExp, Continuity of Care, ABC, because we wanted them to have ideas. And again, it's coproduction, we don't want to give people all the answers, people have got to come up with their own solutions. So that was really fun.

Gill Phillips  47:18

And I think it's about ownership, isn't it, for people to come up with things that they've had fun producing that then are meaningful to them? Yeah. And they really, really rose to the challenge, and then displayed it very proudly, really in their atrium so that everybody can see, as they come in, the graphic record recording the conversations, these extra more creative bits that the team have created. And it keeps the conversations going, doesn't it, for people to come in and think, what's that? How did that happen? What does that mean? Is a very powerful way of actually keeping the energy from these events and taking forward the conversations and building them.

Florence Wilcock  47:55

Completely, it becomes a talking point, not only in the immediate after an event, but for a long time to come, particularly if you put it up. And if you put it up, you're drawing into the conversation, so many different people, anyone that walks past can ask what is this and start thinking about topics.

Gill Phillips  48:17

And I think another exciting, unexpected outcome really, so many of these things have evolved during the pandemic, is linking between teams. So on these virtual events, being able to bring people from different teams together. We've talked a lot about connections, so that say, if you've got those two hospitals and you say are you working together, they'd probably say oh yes. But that might well be just at director of midwifery level, whereas this is the continuity of carer leads starting to really form relationships like we've got, and be able to bounce ideas off each other and practical problems, to have colleagues from other trusts who are in a very similar, similar challenges, and being able to compare notes and be stronger together.

Florence Wilcock  49:04

Yeah. And I remember when you were talking about doing virtual Whose Shoes you saying to me, well, I don't just want it to be what we do in the room converted onto a computer, I want it to bring a different aspect, bring different things. And I think that is something that has been amazing about the virtual situation in that rather than me having to take a whole day off and travel up to Shropshire and attend an event and do whatever. I could jump on the computer for an hour and join you. And, like you say, so could the national lead for continuity of care or Jacqui Dunkley-Bent, the chief midwifery officer for England, so it enabled some of that geographical disparate networking in a really new way, which hopefully we'll keep and will be a real silver lining to the whole thing.

Gill Phillips  50:04

 So 2020 of course, we had to do another Advent  series 

Florence Wilcock  50:09

Of course.

Gill Phillips  50:10

And in this case, it was trying to pull together best practice from the pandemic, and again to feed through that thread of creativity. So we had health visitors singing, and of course, our music therapists, people like Gina Sargeant sang about fab NHS stuff, and how it offers an amazing platform to share good stuff within the NHS. So again, we were collecting stories and videos. So I've actually recorded a podcast with Dr. Terri Porrett, who runs Fab Change Stuff, on the Wild Card Whose Shoes podcast series.

Florence Wilcock  50:47

Oh, it was a brilliant episode.

Gill Phillips  50:49

And I get involved in quite a lot of stuff, say, NHS England type stuff. I don't hear NHS Fab Stuff mentioned enough because it's just such a simple, inclusive platform to share bits and pieces of best practice to save people reinventing the wheel.

Florence Wilcock  51:06

Yeah, I definitely recommend a listen to that one. Thanks, Flo.

Gill Phillips  51:09

And coming back to the advent series gam, again., we brought in lots and lots of creative stuff. And I remember the lively dancing from Emily and Emily Rose from Dance Break.. And then there was Tomos wasn't there?

Florence Wilcock  51:23

Tomos. He's amazing. Yes. So I have this wonderful midwife, Rianne, who works in my antenatal clinic with me. And her son Tomos writes the most amazing poetry and his poem, The Great realisation’, which went completely viral in the pandemic last year. So when Gill started to do some videos of the pandemic Advent series, I thought, well, you know, no harm in asking. So I asked, and he did us a little snippet, especially, which was absolutely brilliant. And his poems are very reflective and lovely. And yeah, really, really lovely to have been able to include that.

Gill Phillips  52:13

And I just absolutely love that. I think the great realisation … it's had, I think it's over 7 million views on YouTube. That's extraordinary. I hope he's doing well because he really deserves to be 

Florence Wilcock  52:25

Oh he’s doing amazingly, he's literally just performed in the Albert Hall at the Royal British Legion. Festival of remembrance. , it's unbelievable what's happening with him, and rightly so.

Gill Phillips  52:39

And rightly so. And he made a little clip for our advent series did. One of my favourites actually in that series was, and she is a real friend of mine and she actually did the opening podcast with me on Wild Card,  Dr. Farzana Hussain and I hardly dared ask her really, because she's always so busy and GPs, just to get somebody like that. And I just put it out there, would she like to be part of the advent series? And then suddenly she popped up dressed as Father Christmas talking about the innovative things they've been doing it her t… The Project Surgery, it is her small GP practice in London. And I've just seen her pop up this week on Twitter dressed as an elf, doing a jab-jab thing. You know, it's all about trying to get people understanding about the importance of vaccination, but without just making a public health video. I think she's amazing.

Florence Wilcock  53:32

She is. Well, I'm hoping if we're sitting here this time next year, I will have met her by then because yeah, she just sounds fabulous.

Gill Phillips  53:41

She really is. So we ended up our advent series last year, and Chelsea and Westminster music therapists had been doing their own advent series. So each day, they'd had a different person singing about on ‘the first day of Christmas, my music therapist taught me.’ … And it was all sorts of little techniques or ideas that mums could do with a little one, whether it's a very young baby or slightly older, in terms of getting children to appreciate music and fill in perhaps a missing word, all sorts of ideas. I did a compilation clip with them for our Christmas Eve special last year. So should we add that clip in?

Florence Wilcock  54:24

I think we should because when I re- listened to it this year thinking about this episode, I actually thought it would be fun for anyone to do, regardless of whether you've got a little one. Maybe you've got an old one, you know anyone that might want a bit of a cheer up or a bit of fun could do any of these activities. It's it's brilliant.

Gill Phillips  54:47

And to see Grace Meadows, one of the music therapists that we worked with at Chelsea and Westminster, go on and head up the music for dementia programme. I think that absolutely summarises what you're saying - music is for everyone , isn't it Flo?

Florence Wilcock  55:01

Yeah, totally.

Other  55:06

On the first day of Christmas, my music therapist gave to me the idea of a cooking song,

Other  55:15

On the second day of Christmas, my music therapist gave to me the idea of making some instruments at home.

Other  55:24

On the third day of Christmas, my MT gave to me the idea of making up a bedtime song to sing to your little one each night

Other  55:37

On the fourth day of Christmas, my MT gave to me the idea of adding some Makaton signs to your child's favourite nursery rhyme.

Other  55:46

On the fifth day of Christmas, my music therapist gave to me the idea of a dressing song to help your little

Other  55:54

On the seventh day of Christmas, my MT gave to me the idea of copying or mirroring even the smallest vocal or breathing sounds that your little one makes.

Other  55:54

On the sixth day of Christmas, my MT gave me the idea of listening to your favourite music together and having a dance.

Other  56:22

On the eighth day of Christmas, my MT gave to me the idea of making a song about what your little one is playing with 

Other  56:32

On the ninth day of Christmas, my MT gave to me the idea of singing a familiar song and leaving spaces to see if your little one can fill in the words or give you a sign that they want you to continue.

Other  56:44

On the 10th day of Christmas my MT said to me, why don't we try making music with household objects together?

Other  56:52

On the 11th day of Christmas, my MT gave to me the idea of using physical movements in an already familiar song

Other  57:02

On the 12th day of Christmas, my MT gave to me the idea of giving your little one the choice of two songs by offering two toys.

Florence Wilcock  57:18

So finally, you get the idea. Energetic, spontaneous. Maybe a little out of control, I would say often greatly out of control

Gill Phillips  57:33

And getting worse,

Florence Wilcock  57:34

But coming from very good intentions hoping to spark ideas and innovative thinking. So we come to 2021. What should we do? Hmm. Well, let's think oh, we both have podcasts. We both have a similar idea of using maybe music for our Christmas festive podcast. And what about a bumper joint episode describing some of our adventures with a musical theme?

Gill Phillips  58:04

Good idea, Flo.

Florence Wilcock  58:06

Hopefully, hopefully, that's what we've just done. Back in 2015, that's come full circle and goes back to the beginning. In our original stellar stories was day 16 Get decorating. Every year at Christmas. We have a hospital Christmas decorations competition, and it's very competitive. It's very competitive, people get very serious about it. And people put a lot of time and energy into it. And yes, people are fiercely competitive about who's going to win and the chief exec and the chair, So very senior judges come around usually on the Friday before Christmas, and there's an official judging. And there are different categories each year. And you're often disappointed if your ward or department doesn't get at least an honourable mention or something like that. So this always makes me think a little bit about the carol, Deck the Halls, You know, a hospital. If you know anything about hospitals, you know, they're mainly corridors, long corridors. So when people start putting stuff up in the corridors, it makes me think Deck the Halls. So I had a little bit of a brainstorm, and I rewrote some of the lyrics to Deck the Halls. And Gill had recently talked to me about voice memos. And my sister showed me how to do a voice memo. So I sang Gill a voice memo of my idea about Deck the Halls with an alternative hospital decorations set of lyrics.

Gill Phillips  59:53

And I said it was a good idea.

Florence Wilcock  59:57

Well. So tell us what happened next Gill,

Gill Phillips  1:00:01

So I received your voicemail. I thought that's great, but I could see what was going to happen was that you were going to invite me to sing live on our joint podcast and I think there's a difference between … we've done it once or twice in the room, haven't we? And that is kind of like spontaneous.

Florence Wilcock  1:00:16

Oh, we did.

Gill Phillips  1:00:18

We did.

Florence Wilcock  1:00:18

We sang Daisy, Daisy. I can’t  remember why

Gill Phillips  1:00:23

People are thinking we're losing the plot now.

Florence Wilcock  1:00:25

Yes. Okay. So yeah. So you weren't up for a duet, a singing duet?

Gill Phillips  1:00:30

Well, I think something spontaneous in the room where it just happens. But the idea that we've had the chance to think about it and it’s still that bad

Florence Wilcock  1:00:36

so  you were chickening out 

Gill Phillips  1:00:43

I thought, Well, who do we know who could perhaps do it a little bit better for us and I went back to Claire. So Claire Flower, and I just sent her the lyrics such as they were, and suggested that perhaps she might be able to help a bit. And this is where the brilliance of our community came in. She said ‘Can you wait till Wednesday’? Well, I think it was Monday so that wasn't unreasonable. And she said because I'm going into work on Wednesday and perhaps can get some of my friends to join in. And then when she sent it back to me now, I think this is brilliant. It's better than if it was perfect you know what I mean, she sent back what they’d  done, I guess they probably had like one take at it because they're very busy people. And she sent it back to me and she said Gill, it is far from perfect, but it's done. And our whole JFDI JUST DO IT approach. Claire has bought into that her colleagues at Chelsea and Westminster have got together and they've even grabbed a tambourine and here it is.

Florence Wilcock  1:01:38

Deck the halls for 2021.

Other  1:01:41

Deck the halls with boughs of holly, It’s the season to be jolly, creative juices can get flowing,  competition ever growing,  every day objects find new purpose, …

Florence Wilcock  1:03:14

Thank you Claire and whoever she roped in unexpectedly on that day. We're very grateful,

Gill Phillips  1:03:21

Very grateful.

Florence Wilcock  1:03:22

We hope you've enjoyed this our latest #MatExp adventure. Who knows what next year 2022 MatExp adventure will be, we'll have to see

Gill Phillips  1:03:34

Possibly violins, possibly violins making people cry.

Florence Wilcock  1:03:38

We hope you have a wonderful festive season, whether you're working over the holidays, or not. Hopefully not too many of you have got COVID and are unwell. And we do hope that some of you have an opportunity to meet up with family and friends safely. We will see you all in 2022. In the meantime, happy Christmas and New Year from Flo and Gill.

Gill Phillips  1:04:04

From Flo and Gill,. Thank you so much Flo. That's been amazing. I hope people hang on in there with our adventures.

Florence Wilcock  1:04:11

Absolutely. Thank you so much, Gil, and also of great importance. Thank you so much to Mr. Whose Shoes who now has to take our babbling recording. Make some sense of it and make it all far from perfect but done.

Gill Phillips  1:04:29

Yeah. I’ll choose my moment to ask him but the brief will be ‘far from perfect, but done’

Mr WhoseShoes  1:04:36

And a Christmas outtake for you from Mr. Whose Shoes

Gill Phillips  1:04:41

Shall I stop the recording?

Florence Wilcock  1:04:42

Yeah, I think so. Do you think that was okay?

Gill Phillips  1:04:44

I think yeah, I think it was it was … different 

Gill Phillips  1:04:53

I hope you have enjoyed this episode. If so, please subscribe now to hear more of these fascinating conversations on your favourite podcast platform and please leave a review. I tweet as Whose Shoes. Thank you for being on this journey with me and let's hope that together we can make a difference.