Thriving Communities and the Southbank Centre present Art by Post: Of Home and Hope workshop - 21st September - 3 to 4pm

20th September 2021

This is a reminder about our next Thriving Communities webinar in partnership with Southbank Centre – tomorrow (Tuesday 21^st September) 3-4pm.

Tuesday 21 September, 3-4pm
Register here. 

Join Thriving Communities and the Southbank Centre for a participatory online workshop exploring their free creative project resources to coincide with the opening of their Art by Post exhibition: Of Home and Hope at the Royal Festival Hall. 

What is Art by Post? 

Art by Post is the Southbank Centre’s landmark national Covid-19 response initiative. Since May 2020 the Southbank Centre has sent over 40,000 creative activity booklets through the letterboxes of over 4,500 people living with one or more long term health conditions.  

Participants are supported to explore a vast range of creative tasks produced by a diverse and multidisciplinary team of artists encouraging them to be artistic and imaginative, and as a result, become part of the growing Art by Post community. Via Freepost envelopes that were included with each booklet, they have received over 800 pieces of artwork to form the foundation of our Art by Post exhibition: Of Home and Hope.  

All the Art by Post booklets will be available to download as part of the exhibition and tour.  

What will you learn? 

Southbank Centre’s Creative Learning Programme prior to the pandemic was all about finding ways to give people access to their site and artistic programme as a live experience. Tackling loneliness and social isolation was one of Southbank’s existing key strategic priorities however the moving to postal project delivery has been a fast learning curve. The Southbank Centre has committed to ensuring they continue to offer creative experiences by the post to continue to reach those most isolated and excluded from digital or in-person art activities across the UK. 

In this session, we will have two Art by Post artists share their experiences and to lead us in their favourite creative activity from one of the 11 booklets. We will also share additional tools and resources to help build confidence in using the resources within your workplace, home or community.

Why does this matter? 

Loneliness is considered to be one of the largest health concerns we have - it is likely to increase your risk of death by 26% (Holt-Lunstad, 2015) and is considered worse than obesity and as bad for your health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. The Southbank Centre was concerned that the pandemic was very likely to exacerbate the loneliness crisis already affecting 9 million people in the UK. Art by Post: Of Home and Hope celebrates the power, resilience and positivity of the Art by Post participants from across the UK, aged 18 to 103 who during the pandemic, have been at further risk of social isolation, loneliness and digital exclusion. 

Who will be speaking? 

The session will be hosted by Thriving Communities and Emma Nutland, Creative Learning Manager - Arts and Wellbeing at the Southbank Centre. They will be joined by artists, Bernadette Russell and Seiwa Cunningham, and an invited speaker from our Art by Post community.

What will the session look like? 

Each speaker will share their perspective as part of the Art by Post project and lead us in a short creative exercise from one of the booklets.  

This will be followed by a short Q&A. 

Who should attend? 

Art by Post is supported by a network of 13 national delivery partners and 156 referral partners, including hundreds of professionals such as link workers, befrienders and activity coordinators. During this session, we hope to grow our Art by Post network and meet other like-minded people keen to explore creative resources within their communities. 

Open to anyone in the voluntary, health and social care, community, the criminal justice system, faith and social enterprise sector with an interest in learning more about creative participation to support wellbeing.

No previous art experience is required to participate and there are multiple entry points in each booklet to open out a theme and develop creative responses. Please bring along pencils, felt tip pens and paper.