A new month begins, and with this new month begins The Age Of Creativity’s annual festival: sharing creativity with older people. Each year the festival has a specific focus, and this year it’s A Call To Action. This highlights how two years of pandemic have cast a long shadow, and how research has found thatContinue reading “Creative Constancy”
Tag Archives: arts
Drawing A Line
How might drawing have a particular contribution to make to wellbeing? What could be distinct about drawing? When I first got into art, I started with drawing, and it was a few years before I began to paint as well. Even now, I still feel far more at ease with a pencil or pen thanContinue reading “Drawing A Line”
Think Art
As I think about how art can help mental health and wellbeing, two distinct ways emerge. One way sees creativity as a positive to focus on, as refuge or haven, space away from the everyday and from specific issues. The other uses creativity directly to address and work through those issues, to express thoughts, feelings,Continue reading “Think Art”
Taking Part
Autumn is here again, and so too is the National Day of Arts in Care Homes (24 September) – an opportunity to highlight this important sector. This last crazy 18 months, the media has turned its attention to care homes more than it has for many years. There’s been empathy with residents unable to goContinue reading “Taking Part”
Looking Back, Looking Ahead
A year since I first set up Medley to share art, music and nature for wellbeing, I thought I would look back over the last twelve months – and ahead to what might come next. Integral to Medley is combining three different ways to boost wellbeing, that is, music, nature and art. Balancing the threeContinue reading “Looking Back, Looking Ahead”
In More Ways Than One
As I’m writing during Deafblind Awareness Week, this blog post seemed an opportunity to reflect how people living with sight and hearing loss might find nature, art and music helpful in all different ways. Running this year from 27 June to 3 July, Deafblind Awareness Week is focusing on telling other people, sharing the experiencesContinue reading “In More Ways Than One”
Common Ground
Hearing the theme of Creativity And Wellbeing Week 2021 reminded me of the striking Banksy artwork which was first seen in Southampton last year. It shows a boy casting aside his superhero dolls for a doll dressed as a nurse: the true superheroes of the pandemic. Creativity recognizing the importance of care. So what thenContinue reading “Common Ground”
Creativity And Autism
To mark World Autism Awareness Day on 2nd April, I’m focusing this blog post on how and why art – and music and nature too – can help people who have autism. World Autism Day was founded by the UN and is held every year on 2nd April, as an opportunity to rais eawareness ofContinue reading “Creativity And Autism”
Care To Create
You might think that during long months of lockdown, arts activities would have ground to a halt in care homes of all places. You would be wrong. In a year when so much media coverage of care homes has focused on delays in coronavirus testing and scarcity of PPE, it is more important than everContinue reading “Care To Create”
Lockdown’s Long Shadow?
At a time when the digital world was fast growing, lockdown has only accelerated its part in our lives. But lockdown has also highlighted the importance of real-life, face to face interaction and the need for live music, art groups and events and time spent outdoors in nature. When concert halls fall silent, art groupsContinue reading “Lockdown’s Long Shadow?”
Medley 