Even prior to the impacts of the pandemic, awareness of the importance of robust mental health was growing. Now, post-lockdown, a lot of us need help acclimatising to interacting with others and overcoming the fear of the past two years. MAC and our partners want to enable people to find their tools to help them regain confidence and be a part of family, friendships and the community. 

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Moray Art Centre (MAC), with Wild Things, Moray Wellbeing Hub (MWH) and artist Iona Leishman run a programme of six 3-hour workshops for adults to teach about the local environment while using creativity to manage and improve mental health.

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Wild Things set the scene in the environment surrounding MAC at Findhorn. Artist Iona Leishman guides you to making a joint mural / individual pieces using found materials and expressing our experiences with new art skills. Moray Wellbeing Hub can help to connect MAC to those with mental health issues who express an interest in the workshop. MAC provides a facilitator, arts materials and participant support throughout so you can feel safe and heard.

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Each week we offer a different location, easily walkable from MAC. Iona then tailors each artistic experience to align with the environment (drawing and painting birds at Findhorn Bay) and by listening to what you want to create (sun prints in clear warm weather).

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Previous Art in Nature workshop programmes have been really successful in helping those who took part. We survey participants at the beginning and end of each programme so we can make sure we are helping everyone in the right way. Before our last workshops a third of participants felt hopeful about the future, by the end of the programme this was 100% of those who took part!

 

Previous evaluation has also shown a ten-fold increase in people feeling able to self-manage health challenges and we will be rolling out more Art in Nature workshops in 2023 so that more people can benefit from being creative in nature.

 

A BIG thanks for the tsiMoray Communities Mental Health and Wellbeing Fund 2022 and localgiving's Magic Little Grants for making these workshops happen and enabling MAC to support our local community! 

 

Please contact nature@morayartcentre.org for more information.