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Thanks for all the messages about the launch of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Arts, Health and Wellbeing research inquiry report: Creative Health: The Arts for Health and Wellbeing. We’ll be holding a large-scale event in January to follow up what has happened in between the launch and the new year. I’ll post the details asap, but let’s try and get people from all quarters of our North West Region involved. Thank you everyone for your continued support and interest. 

For those of you interested in some of the wider structural machinations of arts/health - the National Alliance for Museums, Health and Wellbeing is to merge with the National Alliance for Arts, Health and Wellbeing to become the ‘Culture, Health and Wellbeing Alliance’ in 2018, led by Arts and Health South West. It will enter Arts Council England’s national portfolio as a ‘Sector Support Organisation’ and be a key partner in delivering the recommendations from a recent cross-parliamentary report on the arts and wellbeing. Much, much more on this soon.

Portraits of Recovery present: Apples & Other Fruits

Performed only once, Apples and Other Fruits is a live walkabout performance in HOME’s gallery space presided over by high-wire avant-guardian and force of nature, David Hoyle, in collaboration with artist Jackie Haynes. This will be a night of laughter and bravery exploring recovery from substance use within the LGBT+ community and beyond. It’s anything but dry.

In the spirit of The Recoverist Manifesto, through poetry, performance, film, live art and installation, this encounter creates a frame for the traces of lived experience — thoughtful, angry and beautiful. Arrived at through a process of nomadic art making with ideas generated via trips to Southport, Platt Hall Gallery of Costume Gallery and Manchester’s Gay Village, a group of artists Recoverists and makers came together to confront the existing narratives of recovery and ask “what lies beyond?” Apples and Other Fruits is a part of UNSEEN: Simultaneous Realities. A Portraits of Recovery project curated by Mark Prest and part of three visual and performance art commissions that explore the viability and desire for Greater Manchester, LGBT+, Disability and South Asian recovery communities to become more visible and better understood.

Moving In

Five days ago, and extraordinary couple artists began and equally extraordinary piece of work called the 'Moving In' Residency. Artists Claire Ford and Kate Sweeney are moving from their respective studios and creating a new studio space in Northbourne Residential Care Home in Gateshead. Over a one month period they will live and sleep at Northbourne in order to work creatively with residents, families and care staff. The project seeks to challenge the conventional 'workshop' structure that artists are restricted to in care home and institutional settings and aims to develop more immersive practices and create space to experiment the types of activity, processes and outcomes that could be possible.

I’ve had the great pleasure of working with both artists as part of Dementia & Imagination, and Claire was a student here at MMU. Over these last few years I’ve grown increasingly frustrated with the dominance of biomedical ways of evidencing the impact of the arts on people’s health and wellbeing, and am undertaking a long inquiry into artists as researchers in their own right - and like you - I’ll be curious to see how Claire and Kate’s residency pans out. It’s great to see something fresh and novel in the field and which isn’t governed by reductivists. You can read their regular updates and watch their video diary by clicking on the image below. Best, best things to you both...and talking of Dementia & Imagination...

...on Monday 14th at 6:00pm, Kat Taylor former Arts & Health research associate on the very same Dementia & Imagination project, has curated a small exhibition at The Dukes in Lancaster. As part of their 3-year project, ’A Life More Ordinary,’ Kat has brought some of the imagery and work from Dementia & Imagination together to share the work beyond the research site in Derbyshire, where the work was created by people living with dementia.

If you’re an early career researcher in arts and health, following the exhibition, at 8:00pm Kat will be hosting an informal meeting of the nascent Early Career Researchers Network at the Borough Pub in Lancaster.  

Celebrating Age Round 2 

Deadline: 31st August

Celebrating Age, a joint Arts Council England/Baring Foundation fund, which supports partnerships between arts and older people's organisations, is now open for applications.  Grants of £50,000 to £100,000 are available to support cultural spaces and other organisations to be open, positive and welcoming places for older people; and taking high quality arts and culture into places where older people will find it easier to engage. Applicants must be working in partnership in a consortium with one lead organisation. To be eligible to apply, the lead applicant needs to be Arts Council funded, or have presented work to the public through ACE programmes.  Find out more HERE. The deadline for initial Expressions of Interest is 31 August 2017.

Preventing Hate Crime: funding for community projects 

A new funding scheme to support the UK Governments Hate Crime Action Plan has been launched by the Home Office. Not for profit organisations that have been established for at least 12 months and working in partnership with other organisations are invited to apply for grants of up to £50,000 for projects that help to prevent hate crime and address associated issues. Hate crimes are crimes that are motivated by hostility on the grounds of race (including colour, nationality, ethnicity and national origin), religion, disability, sexual orientation and transgender identity. The aim of the fund is to work with affected communities to fund the development of partnership projects that:

Prevent and/or respond to hate crime in local communities

Increase reporting; improve support for victims and build understanding of hate crime.

It is anticipated that up to 8 projects will be supported with successful applicants submitting all invoices for the work by 31st March 2018. The deadline for applications is 15th September 2017. Read more HERE.

Engaging Libraries Programme opens for applications 

The Carnegie UK Trust has announced that its Engaging Libraries Programme is now open for applications. The programme which is a partnership between the Carnegie UK Trust and the Wellcome Trust offers grants of £5,000 - £15,000 to libraries to deliver creative and imaginative public engagement projects on health and wellbeing. Applicants must be public library services - but the programme has a strong emphasis on collaboration and encourages libraries to think about a broad range of potential partnership opportunities in the delivery of their projects. The Carnegie UK Trust are aiming to support between 8 - 10 libraries and activities must be completed between October 2017 and October 2018. The closing date for applications is 5pm the 23rd August 2017. Read more HERE. 

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