Wellbeing

64 Million Artists are running daily creative challenges to bring people together virtually during the coronavirus outbreak.

The challenges can be used with friends, family, in school or community groups, or for workmates working from home.

The challenges aim to promote sticking together, having some fun, and creating to connect.

Sign up here. 

The Trustees of Paintings in Hospitals have appointed Sandra Bruce-Gordon as Director of the charity from the end of April 2020 to replace outgoing Director Ben Pearce.

Sandra is a leading figure in the development of arts, cultural and public services across London and will bring to Paintings in Hospitals a wealth of business acumen and a great track record in delivery from over the past 20 years.

This one-day training course from Dementia Pathfinders aims to promote the principles of best practice in providing bibliotherapy sessions, which allow us to share thoughts and feelings, through the connection of stories and poetry, that will enable us to bring books to life. The training is for anyone who works with people living with dementia, family members or carers, to enable a different approach to keeping mental health healthy by sharing personal stories through characters in literature and poetry.

Despite evidence that shows the arts and play have close connections in how they contribute to and achieve health outcomes for children and adults, there has been a dearth of action to encourage knowledge-exchange between these fields or to understand how the processes across these interventions may be similar. This conference aims to address this gap, encouraging shared learning and asking critical questions that will support us to move forward in arts and play with new-found insight.

University Hospital Limerick is inviting clinical professionals, music therapists, musicians, representatives from relevant NGOs, service users and members of the public, to share in a day of research, workshops and performances exploring music, music therapy, health and wellbeing.

Examining how race, gender and profession intersect with issues of mental health, Playing ON are presenting the world premiere of their late co-founder Philip Osment’s final play, Can I Help You? at Omnibus Theatre.  

Join Magpie Dance, the leading dance charity for children and adults with learning disabilities, for a dance technology festival at Langley Park Centre for the Performing Arts, to coincide with Creativity and Wellbeing Week. Try your hand at interactive exhibitions, immersive workshops and watch live performances. Meccanoid, the 4ft interactive dancing robot, will also be making an appearance. The event is suitable for all the family. Tickets can be booked here.

A study into words for wellbeing has concluded that practitioners need new structures for training and supervision in order to work with vulnerable people. The two-year study, commissioned by Lapidus International, suggests that training opportunities are needed in the areas of safety, safeguarding and supervision.

LAHF is part of a consortia, led by the Culture, Health and Wellbeing Alliance, taking part in the second cohort of the Julie's Bicycle Accelerator Programme to develop ‘innovative ideas around sustainable practice’.

We will have three areas of focus:

January 2020 marks a year of being in the role of Director for London Arts in Health. New Year is always a good time to reflect and look forward and so I thought I would round up some of what I have learnt a year in as well as what I am looking forward to.