Today, the Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival publishes Participatory Arts and Mental Health: A Good Practice Resource. You can download it as a PDF and we plan to make it available in other formats soon.
Download Participatory Arts and Mental Health: A Good Practice Resource
About the Resource
The resource is designed to support people who want to create and deliver participatory arts and mental health projects in the most safe, supportive and nurturing way possible.
It was written by Andrew Eaton-Lewis, the Mental Health Foundation’s Arts Programme Officer, who spent a year talking to artists and organisations across Scotland who have worked on participatory arts and mental health projects.
To launch the resource, we are hosting two events in September — an online event on Tuesday 8 September (2–3pm) and and an in-person event at Civic House in Glasgow on Friday 11 September (11am–4pm, Lunch Provided). These events are designed to bring together artists and organisations who contributed their expertise and experience to the resource, as well as anyone else who is interested in its findings.
Resource Partners
There is now a widespread consensus that participating in the arts has a positive influence on mental health. Many of the people we spoke to for this resource were supported by Creative Scotland’s Participatory Arts and Mental Health Fund, which funded 13 projects across Scotland between 2023 and 2024. We also consulted people who were funded by SMHAF’s own Regional Participatory Arts Fund, which is now in its second year, and attendees at a symposium event in Glasgow last year and a subsequent online gathering early this year.
Much of Creative Scotland’s work continues to focus on mental health and wellbeing, and the organisation recently appointed a freelance Arts and Health Co-ordinator, Catherine Findlay, who is currently leading on the development of a national Arts and Mental Health Framework. Catherine will be at our events in September to talk about the framework and how you can get involved.
We are grateful to the Baring Foundation for supporting this resource, as well as our own participatory arts and mental health work, and to Creative Scotland for facilitating many of the interviews. We hope to build on the learning captured in this resource in the coming months.
