Creative Arts
We're passionate about the importance of the arts in healthcare and the difference it can make to the experiences of our service users and staff.
Our creative arts activities take place on the wards, bringing creativity in many forms to inpatients, and can include any artform such as visual art, photography, music, dance, drama, creative writing, reading for wellbeing, poetry.
Our programme and projects considers the wellbeing of the participants involved. Each participant’s contribution is highly valued and encouraged in a manner that is fair, equitable and inclusive.
Are currently running in Shrewsbury on Thursdays from 2 - 4pm at The English Bridge Workshop for community-based service users and on Mondays at Redwoods for inpatients. The groups are run by professional artist Jean Mills and a range of techniques are explored using different materials and equipment.
At St. George’s Hospital in Stafford we have an art group on a Thursday lunchtime for adult acute inpatients, which is run by Debbie Todd.
We also have Simon Watson who runs an art group and a music group for inpatients on Norbury Ward at St Georges.
Some projects lead to exhibitions of artwork within Trust buildings or in partnership spaces and galleries.
For more information please contact Jessica Kent on 01743 210048 / Jessica.kent@mpft.nhs.uk
Feedback: Fab afternoon, really lifted my spirits - Lovely day, made me laugh, lovely people - Brilliant class, thank you. This group keeps me sane, love it! - Thank you ever so much for having me as part of this group, it really helps.
Part of our work involves curating exhibitions at a range of locations around the Trust. More often than not this is artwork created by service users as part of a project and this naturally tends to be exhibited on the wards where service users can get the most enjoyment from it.
Our regular art competition is the other main source of the artwork for exhibitions. We have built up a body of work from the competitions, some of which is currently on show in the foyer at St Chad's and at various locations across the Trust.
We have a Photobox kit which provides Activity Co-ordinators with the opportunity to do photography with inpatients.
The kit includes 4 digital cameras plus a Canon Selphy printer which instantly prints images taken on the cameras using the memory cards. It produces 6”x 4” colour prints – which can be used just as they are or put together as a collage. The participants enjoy the instant results with this printer – a sense of achievement – or an opportunity to improve their photography on the spot.
We run regular training for Activity Co-ordinators and AHP’s so that they are familiar with the kit and feel confident to use with inpatient groups. Sometimes images taken with the cameras are curated into exhibitions at our inpatient sites.