Creative Interventions in Health - The Friday Art Group
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Creative Interventions is a collaborative project in Glasgow’s East End, which aims to demonstrate the positive impact that visual arts can have upon health and wellbeing. The project works with professional artists and local community organisations on pilot projects using a variety of media including drawing and painting, digital photography, textiles, video and printmaking.
Background
In 2006, Creative Interventions ran a 10-week pilot project at the Anvil Mental Health Centre and another in Parkhead Hospital for patients in the Acute Psychiatric wards. These pilots demonstrated that there is a demand for access to high quality art activities and the feedback was that ten weeks was simply not long enough. The Anvil Centre wanted to encourage its clients to be more independent and access resources outwith the centre.
Creative Interventions provided two more 10 -12 week blocks of art workshops in other venues in the East End to enable people to continue but it became clear what was needed was a permanent base and a longer term programme.
The Friday Art Group formally commenced in March 2007 and will run at least until December 2007 and hopefully beyond. It’s a weekly drop-in fine art workshop to promote good mental health and wellbeing. The participants are people who live in the East End of Glasgow who are experiencing or have a history of mental health problems.
Artists Maria Doyle and Steven Anderson lead the sessions with occasional supplementary visits from guest artists such as sculptor Belinda Guidi. The project also includes excursions to gallery exhibitions. The activities are primarily drawing and painting using a range of media but other activities are introduced as appropriate, to support and stimulate individuals’ development and progress in their art practice.
The Group was set up to provide an opportunity for people to come together with their common interest in making art and to access a supported art programme for a sustained period of time, allowing people to progress further than they could in a short term pilot. The sessions take place for 2 1/2 hours in both the morning and afternoon and people are welcome to attend either or both.
The sessions take place in either the art room upstairs at the East End Healthy Living Centre or in the Art Bothy in the grounds (weather permitting). A core group from the original Anvil Mental Health Centre pilot project attend the sessions on a regular basis. They were keen to continue developing their art practice after the pilot project finished. As The Friday Art Group is an open access session, people are welcome to join at any time and the group’s numbers have swelled. New participants are often introduced through Link Up Services and support workers in local mental health and social services.
The East Glasgow Community Health and Care Partnership, NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde and the East End Healthy Living Centre are supporting partners of the project.
Next Phase
Some of the work made in the sessions has already been exhibited at the Scottish Drugs and Alcohol Conference at the SECC in Glasgow in June with more being shown at the World Mental Health Day at the Bridge Complex in Easterhouse in October. There will also be an exhibition of their work in the café at the East End Healthy Living Centre in the autumn.
Watch the Creative Interventions in Health video
