ANCHORED ART/CREATIVE GATHERINGS

2017-2018

The Anchored Art/Creative Gatherings project continued a previous pilot with Veith Street Gallery Studio Association/Creative Spirit East to support artistic engagement and exploration, and welcome into an artistic community, adults artists with lived experience of mental health challenges. Openness in approaching new tasks, building confidence in their own expressive ideas, and problem solving abilities were all developed within this project. Peer support from other artists helped create a feeling of belonging and eased social isolation. For one participant, feeling part of the community at Wonder’neath allowed him to participate in other Wonder’neath programming afterwards, taking advantage of resources that offered social interaction and access to artmaking. Anchored Art/Creative Gatherings provided supportive programming with a lower facilitator/participant ratio and a quieter environment than our other public programming, necessary for the participation of those attending. The facilitating artists provided thorough debrief notes to assess and modify activities to the needs and interests of the participants with an enhanced coordinator role being central to creating trust, and working with facilitators to ensure a sensitive response to participating artists. Both participants (primarily older adults) and facilitators (younger emerging artists) were initially apprehensive about engagement across differences including age, identity, etc. Several facilitators identified as queer and/or trans and wondered about how participants would respond. In the end, both facilitators and participants were appreciative of the kinds of non-judgemental dialogue that they shared in the process of making art together. Some of our facilitators also have lived mental health experiences and recognized that most programming they encounter in support of mental health challenges was for youth, and they saw the participants as role models of people aging with mental health and communicating about challenges