The Growing Together Art-in-Nature group that I facilitate weekly at the community allotment in Cardiff began a new project recently, creating a loom from salvaged willow staves. Participants foraged for natural materials: Ivy, conifer, bay leaves, catkins, wisteria, bamboo, buddleia, and honeysuckle were all woven onto the loom. This is an ongoing collaborative project that … More Natural Weaving
The Researchers Wellbeing Through Arts project held a celebration of the work created in the Cardiff workshops yesterday at Llanover Hall Arts Centre. The project was initiated to help PhD students to incorporate art into their research methodology and communication. Four Cardiff-based artists were chosen to facilitate workshops: Myself – Intuitive Drawing, Penny Crowley – Watercolour Painting, … More Researchers Wellbeing Through Arts Project
I was invited to facilitate a workshop for PhD students recently at the National Museum of Wales, Cardiff. It is part of a wonderful initiative by Shibani Das and Rebecca Howarth: the Researchers Wellbeing Thru Arts project, created to help PhD students to incorporate art into their research methodology and communication. As well as connecting academia … More Creative Connections: Academia and the Arts
The Growing Together group went foraging around the allotment and the Art Shed today, picking up leaves, flowers and berries to make beautiful mandalas to honour the season. Circular and non-permanent, using patterns to represent the circle of life, mandalas represent wholeness. They appear in all aspects of life: the celestial circles we call earth, … More Winter Mandalas
We began the new Art for Wellbeing course with drawing and mark making. As the course unfolds over ten weeks, there is space for participants’ practice to evolve organically without the pressure of outcomes. The first thing I always emphasise is that you don’t need to be ‘good at art’ to make art. There are … More Intuitive Drawing
This exhibition at Wales Millennium Centre in the Ffwrnais space is part of ‘Un Blaned, Un Cyfle – One Planet, One Chance’ project, celebrating the wonder of our planet and highlighting the urgent need to protect our natural environment. It showcases work by participants from different groups we have facilitated across Cardiff, Bridgend and The Vale … More Un Blaned, Un Cyfle
This practice encourages recording of and reflecting on experiences while interacting with the natural world. It serves as a non-verbal journal, capturing moments, feelings and memories with objects instead of words, and invites sharing through the act of storytelling. It can be useful as a meaningful record of surviving a challenging period. One participant used … More Journey Sticks
‘Growing Together’ is a Breathe Creative collaboration with Ty Canna Mental Health Outreach Service and is based at the community allotments on Bessemer Road in Cardiff. The project is funded by the Arts Council of Wales’s Creative Nature programme with the theme of ‘connecting people to nature’. It. aims to facilitate a creative wellbeing journey … More Growing Together: Creative Wellbeing in Nature
Collaborative poems featuring the voices of members of the Growing Strong Group in Bridgend.
The Arts for Wellbeing organization I work for, Breathe Creative, was successful in securing funding from Arts Council Wales and the National Lottery fund to run a series of groups, one of which is the Growing Strong group with Mental Health Matters that I run in Bridgend every Friday. In my other role as Refugee … More Creative Wellbeing for Ukraine
Sarah J Featherstone 