1/10 #MentalHealthMatters - read on if you are interested in arts & mental health. This is a practical guide that talks about the impact of the pandemic @ace_national @HENLEYDARREN @DCMS - we @closeandremote have spent the last 18 months responding to the situation.
2/10 #MentalHealthMatters - March 2020 all of our work was cancelled @closeandremote - along with other artists we were in trouble. With digital & painting skills we reinvented our workflow, not overnight but by trying things out. Zoom went from novel to necessary...
3/10 We quickly realised that people struggling with mental health did not want to spend time online. It needed a different approach. With @2NQLondon #ArtSchoolinaBox was developed. It's a very simple idea - you get an art workbook & all the materials in a box, with some tea bags
4/10 We delivered a 6 week course with @IslingtonMind - we had tears, laughs & we did art together. Confidence grew, Zoom became a social space & we taught watercolours online. We learned that being alone was hard & often combined with physical health issues. But it was working
5/10 As #ArtSchoolinaBox came to an end we had learned some important points:
• sometimes you just have to listen
• we are artists not therapists
• people appreciate artists skills & methods
• You don't have to talk online all the time
• Be open to the room
6/10 We tried out art history lessons in the @2nq workshops with @malcolmgarrett doing a 15 min spot. We covered the work of Sophie Taeuber Arp & typography. That worked. It was a bit like a radio show online...we'll do that again...
7/10 We were lucky to have some @ace_national emergency money, so we devised #TelegraphHill with @blgmind - we are delivering this right now in the rain! Our big take-away #MentalHealthMatters is that people are still concerned about public spaces. So, we've split our group...
8/10 We've half online & half at #TelegraphHill. We now know that online is here to stay. It reaches into people's homes safely & they like public space too. Parks. Here a small group is learning to observe colour in the park with the #TelegraphHill workbook...@LewishamCouncil
9/10 And at the same time another group is working on Zoom, learning watercolour method. #LetsCreate will mean new approaches like this. But they are focussed on the needs of people who are coming out of the worst pandemic for over 100 years. Gently, things change.
10/10 If you've got this far, thanks for reading. We are @closeandremote - we thank @ace_national @2NQLondon @malcolmgarrett @KghKaty @IslingtonMind @blgmind #MentalHealthMatters
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