Creating Space

We have been working with colleagues in the NHS on a project for staff, Creating Space, and are delighted to have received Feast funding to take it forward. The project, which is being delivered on behalf of the Creative Health and Wellbeing Partnership, will deliver mindful creative activity packs to our community and hospital staff containing activities and materials that they can carry out in short periods of time and that are designed to relieve stress and anxiety and provide a moment of calm.

We are looking for ideas from creative practitioners to add to the menu of activities we have already developed. We can offer a small fee and promotion of your creative practice on the activity sheets.

We will put together activity packs containing instruction sheets and some materials. These will be sent out to named contacts at each hospital who will have been briefed about the project and can encourage staff to participate. They will be located in the ‘safe spaces’ that are being set up in each community hospital where staff can go to wind down in a quiet and supportive environment.

If you would like to offer an activity, please send it in as a word document (don’t worry about fancy design as they will all be put together in a similar format) together with any images that are needed to make sense of the instructions and a list of materials needed. We will be supplying some materials with the packs, so bear in mind that these need to be able to be sent out in a postal pack.

We are looking for up to 6 activities that:

– support mindful creativity

– can be completed in a short space of time at a table

– have simple instructions

– use easily available materials

If the activity can be extended in any way so that people can be encouraged to continue with them at home, that would be useful.

The packs will also include information on the evidence so that people know that the activities do have a positive impact and may encourage them to try them with patients if appropriate so if you have any links to the evidence base for your specific activity please include them, though we also have information on these.

For each idea we use we will pay £25 and put information about you and your practice (contact details, website address) on your activity sheet and an acknowledgment in our introduction to the pack.

The activities we already have include writing haikus, mindful doodling/zentangling, a version of ‘Desert Island Discs’, using postcards as visual stimulation.

Please send in your activity to jayne@arts-well.com by Tuesday 26th May.