Today Dulwich Picture Gallery are hosting a one-day event called Reframing mental health in museums and galleries, supported by the Baring Foundation.
In this blog, the Programme and Engagement team introduce the Gallery’s Together Through Art programme, which trains young people with experience of mental health problems to become Creative Peer Facilitators on their schools’ programmes.
This blog was first published as a case study in our report Creatively Minded at the Museum.
Introduction
We are an ambitious gallery, creating meaningful and inclusive encounters with art. Our vision is to be an inspirational cultural destination for everyone, unlocking fresh perspectives through the art of the past and present. We remain true to our founders’ innovation in presenting art ‘for the inspection of the publick’ through our ground-breaking programme of exhibitions, co-produced displays, contemporary commissions and creative activities. We aim to be an active agent for positive change, creating healthier and happier communities by embedding creativity in people’s lives. Collaboration is reflected across all our activities. Rooted in our locality, we work together with grassroots community, arts and VCSE groups and networks, schools and higher education setting partners in Southwark, Lambeth & Lewisham. Together, we platform diverse voices, evolving dynamically with the needs of our communities. Our key areas of focus are relevance, employability and health and wellbeing.
Our Health and Wellbeing work is delivered by working collaboratively with health partners to use the arts and creativity to support increased outcomes within the areas of mental health, social isolation, and long-term health conditions and promoting collaborative and community-based approaches. It has been developed through partnerships, working with the South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust (SLaM) Recovery College and the Tessa Jowell Health Centre. The programmes include co-production working with people with lived experience of accessing services for their mental health, social prescription using the arts as a tool for wellbeing and new artwork commissions which enhance the healing environment.
We were aware that access to the arts can be a valuable tool to support people with mental health. By working in a partnership model with local health partners we have been able to develop programmes and projects that respond to the local need and additionally provide new ways for us to use the Gallery, its collection, exhibitions and grounds as a resource to be used to support health and wellbeing.
Together Through Art
The Together through Art (TTA) programme at Dulwich Picture Gallery supports young people with lived experience of mental health difficulties and aims to reduce the stigma which surrounds mental health.
Working in partnership with the South London and Maudsley (SLaM) Mental Health Trust Recovery College, the Gallery piloted a paid training and development programme for five local young people aged 18-25 who have lived experience of accessing child or adult mental health services. The project aimed to equip the participants with tools and experiences to share how they had used creativity in their lives to support their wellbeing to help children and young people in our priority boroughs. One participant said that they wanted to be involved in the project as:
“I want to further develop my established connection between art and mental health. As an artist and someone who has experienced challenges with my own mental wellbeing, I think that it is important for me to gain as much information as possible to create spaces where healing can be possible through creativity.”
Each participant took part in a paid six-month paid training and development programme delivered by the Gallery and the SLaM Recovery College to become Creative Peer Facilitators (CPFs). Working alongside the Gallery’s artist team, CPFs used the co-production model to co-design and co-deliver bespoke creativity and wellbeing workshops for children and young people in Primary and Secondary Schools in our priority boroughs. The workshops used artworks in the Gallery’s collection as a starting point to explore creative resilience, mindfulness and cultural capital with the students.
One of the main challenges of the project was the coordination of all of the creative delivery teams to match the availability of the school groups. We worked with over 500 children and young people and ensuring that there was space for them in our art studio for the creative workshops was quite a juggle. It was crucial to ensure that the CPFs were also supported throughout this process.
For the Gallery one of the biggest assets for the project was the experiences, ideas, and enthusiasm that the CPFs brought to the project and the wider Gallery. Their ability to talk openly about the difficulties they had had with their mental health was refreshing and key to the success of the project. One of the CPF’s said:
“For me personally, the opportunity to use my lived experience at work has been hugely refreshing and quite unique. To be able to teach others about the ways art can benefit mental well-being has helped me personally gain insight and understanding into mentally difficult times and find purpose in my professional and personal work going forward.”
For many of the schools we worked with it was the first time they had taken part in a project with Dulwich Picture Gallery. Increased levels of anxiety and poor mental health among students post lockdown was one of the key reasons schools wanted to take part. One teacher said she wanted to gain ‘a greater understanding of how to plan and facilitate arts based approached to wellbeing and mental health’. Their comments on the workshops included that they were ‘accessible for all and well resourced’ and that children were able to ‘broaden their emotional literacy’. Teachers also commented that being involved in the project had raised cultural capital across the school and highlighted the diversity of ways our collection can be used. They have also taken inspiration from the mindfulness sessions in the project to use similar methods in school.
For all CPFs the project had a positive impact on their confidence devising and delivering creative sessions. Notably, they all continue to be creative facilitators for the Gallery and other organisations. The connections built with the artists they were paired with continues to provide strong support when engaging in future work. One CPF told us that:
“being surrounded by so many talented, organised and skilled people has been a wonderful chance in seeing how multiple teams come together to create something like this and that despite the pandemic, a career in the arts is not unobtainable or non existent – quite the opposite.”
What next?
The project has enabled the Gallery to build new and stronger relationships with the local creative community. We have secured funding from Southwark Council to deliver wellbeing workshops for local children in Year 6 to support their transition to secondary school. We will use the learning from TTA to inform what these workshops look like and will work with the TTA team of CPFs and artists to devise and deliver it.
We hope to run another TTA project in the year to come, following this model, taking learning and comments from the participants this year. We hope to explore new artforms such as drama and dance, as this project focused on visual art.
Jane Findlay, Head of Programme & Engagement; Kelly Robinson, Learning & Participation Manager; and Alex Bowie, Schools Programme Manager, Dulwich Picture Gallery.
