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| Leaf Arts |
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| community & public arts |
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| www.leaf-arts.co.uk |
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| Leaf Arts provides creative arts opportunities to empower, assist and facilitate people in making positive changes within their lives and community. |
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| Art in Health |
| Taking part in creative arts activities to keep you healthy is not the same as taking prescriptions from your GP or playing sport to stay fit. Everyone can understand how medication makes you better if ill and exercise keeps you fit and healthy. These messages have been shouted out loud and clear for many years such as the current ‘Change 4 Life’ campaign promoting an active life. On the other hand the message that it is a good thing to look after our emotional and mental wellbeing is a relatively ‘new’ idea. If you do believe that it is our emotional, mental and spiritual wellbeing that underlies many medical issues and ailments then you have to accept that the creative arts can play a significant role in supporting people to maintain a healthy balance of mind and body. Visual arts & crafts can be seen as creative Sudoku keeping your mental capacity challenged, creative synapses sparking and visual cortex stimulated, keeping your mental, emotional and spiritual capacities active, in tune, balanced and your wellbeing nurtured. |
| Over the last 10 years or so there has been a grass roots revival in an interest in all things traditional, like crafts and the ‘Grow your Own’ movement, along with a massive increase in volunteering – all activities that help support our sense of wellbeing. It recognises that wellbeing or ‘positive mental health’ is something we all need to take heed of within our ever busy, technological and fractious lives and does not fall solely in the domain of those people living with a diagnosed mental health condition. And perhaps this is true now more so than ever with the coalition governments desire to measure the nations ‘happiness’ as one of the indicators of our ‘standard of living’. If the grass roots movement grows to become mainstream we will demonstrate that we as a nation are taking responsibility for our own health, and send a clear message to our leading institutions of how we feel our money is best spent in supporting our endeavour to lead healthy lifestyles and diminish dependence on the HNS. |
| On an institutional level using the creative arts to specifically address and maintain a positive sense of wellbeing has been making ground for many years with the ‘Arts on Prescription’ and ‘Hospital Arts’ initiatives around the country. However marginalised these schemes are they are beginning to produce the hard scientific-based evidence that will help prove the effectiveness of creative activities in combating some illnesses, reducing some people’s reliance on their GP’s, lowering the need for medication in treating certain mental health conditions and generally helping to alleviate the strain on the NHS budgets, in the same way there is evidence for prescription drugs. Without the political and financial power of the pharmaceutical industry behind us we have to rely on academic research to provide the evidence base that is ultimately required to persuade the hard-nosed institutional fund managers that the creative arts is an effective way to spend money, along with the range of other preventative programmes that are on offer. |
| The creative arts is still seen as mysterious, misunderstood and something that exists at the periphery of one’s life (except of course if you acknowledge yourself to be creative), only to be enjoyed once all the important things in life (mortgages paid, schooling needs addressed, holidays booked, food budgeted for, etc.) are taken care of. This thinking builds up barriers to getting to know your true creative self. If we let these things (however important they obviously are) consume us, there is a danger of our lives becoming unbalanced resulting in a life where the true value of being alive can be left unrealised and missed out. Doing something creative needs to be embraced by everyone (whether you feel you are a creative person or not) and to become as normal a part of one’s life as the annual holiday or DIY home improvements. The truth of the matter is that everyone is creative by nature and recognising this in some way is the key to maintaining a healthy wellbeing. Finding a place for the creative arts within one’s life will reduce the mystery and misunderstanding that surrounds creativity and diminish the many barriers to engagement. |
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