The Arts and Health project C.reative Dialogues continues to develop. Student helpers have been interviewed and selected, the number of potential workshop participants continues to grow and the partnership with TWAM is strengthening.

Following our second meeting with staff and service users at North Tyneside Recovery Centre Fiona Fitzpatrick, Tracey Toffield and myself made a research visit to Segedunum Roman Fort, Baths and Museum. The museum is two minutes walk from the Recovery Centre where we will be basing a series of visual arts workshops so it is a perfect resource  for us.

There is a very good temporary exhibition on in the museum entitled “The Roman Empire: Power and People”, it is a British Museum Touring exhibition giving people outside of London the chance to see some excellent Roman finds. The exhibition ends on September 13th which gives us the opportunity to seek inspiration from these powerful objects at the start of the weekly workshops.

Below are some of the objects that caught my attention:

A Roman Hair net!

Money, money , money , money……..

It is a compact exhibition with beautifully displayed objects in well considered combinations. I am looking forward to finding out what our workshop participants make of it.

Although the focus of the Fellowship this year has been teaching and therefore predominately student centred I have been pleasantly surprised at how many great things have come out of it for me and may practice too.

I am delighted to say that I have recently been invited to become a member of a research centre called CIAS (Centre for Interdisciplinary Artefact Studies ).

This has come out of the contact made during the exhibition / collaborative installation in the XL gallery “If I could Sink My Teeth into The Whole Earth”  incorperating links made by student Olivia Turner through her Anatomy of Site project.

I look forward to more contact with CIAS next academic year.

http://cias.ncl.ac.uk/index.html

Myself and a colleague here in Fine Art (Tracey Toffield) are in the early stages of planning a series of creative workshops for an Arts and Health project called C.reative Dialogues. The aim of the project is to work with a number of people who have multiple needs, culminating in a focus group and exhibition of creative works.

The project has been put together with a number of different partners:

Newcastle University: Institute for Health and Society, School of Art and Culture, The Institute for Creative Arts Practice, LifeWorkArt.

Changing Lives: North Tyneside Recovery Partnership, NHS: Turning Point.

Tyne and Wear Archives and Museums.

Myself and Tracey met with Fiona Fitzpatrick (project leader) last week to look at the space that the workshops will take place in and to meet the Recovery Centre staff and some of the people who have expressed an interest in taking part in the workshops.

Fiona and I then went on to interview a number of students who applied for  placements on the project. We had a good response from the students and it was a tough decision to make the selection. We hope to include the students in all aspects of the project.

The project will generate its own blog in time, but for now I just wanted to say it looks to be a very energising project, engaging with people who have made momentous changes in their lives and who are looking forward to creating a new   future for themselves and their families. We hope to unlock some of their creative potential and to share the work they produce during these workshops with audiences within the Newcastle area.