£260,000 boost for Salisbury based mental wellbeing project
An Arts and Heritage partnership will see three year's worth of courses funded by The National Lottery Community Fund
Last updated 14th May 2021
A Salisbury-based wellbeing project has been given a financial boost as it launches in Mental Health Awareness week.
Well-City Salisbury has been awarded £260,000 of financial support from The National Lottery Community Fund.
Four arts and heritage organisations are involved, ArtCare, The Salisbury Museum, Wessex Archaeology and Wiltshire Creative.
Over three years, the partner organisations will deliver a total of twenty-four courses to people who have a mental health need and vulnerable individuals and groups.
The project aims to make a positive change to the mental health of all participants, to utilise the combined strengths of the partner organisations, to create a legacy of trained artists, facilitators and volunteers and to strengthen the local community to make connections and partnerships to improve local mental health support services.
Lesley Self, Exhibition Organiser for ArtCare at Salisbury District Hospital, delivers creative arts with patients and carers there.
"We're looking forward to finding ways of helping people out in the community with their mental health and wellbeing.
"There will be two eight-week courses per year and one of the ones we are looking at is in the gardens of the hospital, because we have some lovely outside spaces. They will involve making a mosaic, willow weaving in the natural environment and doing some visual arts there too.
"It is about helping people learn new skills, particularly volunteers that might be helping out with the artists. Getting the participants to overcome isolation or giving them a sense of purpose, art can be a distracting from your everyday worries and things like that.
"Art helps you connect with others and become more self-resilient really, stepping away from clinical activities.
"It is a way of self-expression and processing your thoughts and ideas and doing that in a way that is not quite so clinical in a way it's, it's a creative output and art materials can help you do that in a safe way."