PRESS RELEASE 06/06/2012

Prestigious new Arts & Health South WestAwards to be announced from shortlist of 15

The winners of prize money totaling £9000 will be revealed at the first ever Arts and Health South West Awards ceremony, dueto be held at MShed, Bristol’s flagship museum,on Wednesday 27 June.

The Awards, kindly sponsored by the Fine Family Foundation, have been introduced by Arts and Health South West, a registered charity set up to encourage the development of the arts and health sector across the region. The Awards aimto celebrate and spread inspirational arts and health work in the South West.

A total of 15 shortlisted organisations and individuals, detailed below,will compete forone of three prestigious cash prizes in the categories of:

  • arts organisation (£4000),
  • health organisation (£4000)
  • Individual (£1000).

Guest speaker, SemirZeki, Professor of Neuresthetics at University College London, will give a fascinating insight to his ground-breaking research during his talk on 'The Neurobiology of Beauty'.

The 15 shortlisted entries that will be showcased at the awards event, generously supported by MShed, are:

Health Award

Artshine (Bristol)

Berkeley Vale Health community (Gloucestershire)

Brooklea-Wicklea Art & Words for Health Project (Bristol)

Devon Partnership Trust (Exeter)

North Bristol NHS Trust’s “In Whom We Trust”

Salisbury NHS Foundation Trust: Designedwithchildrenforchildren

Art Award

ECOArt on Prescription (North Devon)

Light Box Happiness Project (Bristol)

Misfits Theatre Company (Bristol)

Myrtle Theatre’s ‘A Letter to That’s Life! (Bristol)

Print on PrescriptionDouble Elephant Print Workshop (Exeter)

Somerset Film and Video’s JUMPcuts : Moving On (Bridgwater)

Individual Award

Louisa Newman

Stephen Pettet-Smith

Kamina Walton

The eventwill feature presentations by the shortlisted entries anda delicious sit down lunch of local produce. A commemorative AHSW Awards Yearbook has been produced, kindly sponsored by ALTRO.

Tickets for the Awards ceremony are £30 and can be booked online at

ENDS

For more information contact:

Alex Coulter, Director of Arts & Health South West

e: / 01305 269081

or visit our website:

Notes for Editors

More details of the shortlisted projects and individuals:

Health Award

Artshine is the arts on referral service for Inner City & East Bristol GPs. It covers 14 practices within the area, and is delivered by Bristol Public Health for NHS Bristol, in partnership with Bristol City Council. Artshine is an intervention for adults experiencing mild to moderate mental health difficulties - improving wellbeing, reducing social isolation and building community engagement.

Berkeley Vale Health community, an integrated health community serving 38,000 people, has pioneered using the arts to improve people’s health and to enhance health environments. Projects took place in primary care premises, in local nursing homes and also involved a major arts project to humanise a new community hospital.

Brooklea-Wicklea Art & Words for Health Project enabled patients to move from facilitated sessions at Brooklea Health Centre into community engagement and self-run activities. It models a cost-effective way of meeting patients' needs, including those with long-term or complex problems, which cannot be met through GP consultations alone.

Devon Partnership NHS Trust’s project (with the King's Fund's 'Enhancing the Healing Environment' programme)for an in-patient assessment and treatment unit for people with a dementia aims to reduce distress and promote dignity. ‘Sensory trails’incorporate artwork, colour, lighting and planting to create astimulating, calming and joyful environment which aids orientation through visual markers.

North Bristol NHS Trust’s “In Whom We Trust” project is a photographic and sound record of staff and their work at North Bristol NHS Trust. The commission was to create portraits of staff members, which reflect and celebrate their role within the Trust at a time of change and uncertainty in both the NHS and North Bristol NHS Trust.

Salisbury NHS Foundation Trust: Designed with children for children was a programme of coordinated engagement with children, parents and staff, followed by an intelligent and creative design process, resulting in a caring environment for children that is not only clinically efficient, but also colourful, interactive and playful.

Arts Award

ECOArt on Prescriptionoffered a series of taught art classes to adults with a range of mental health issues. Outdoor sketchbook sessions visually recorded the environment and worked into a selection of colourful designs reproduced into a range of outcomes including a printed book, outside art gallery wall and sets of deckchairs.

Light Box’s Happiness Project provides creative workshops that introduce people to effective strategies for promoting good mental health. These workshops are held in a city-centre empty shop space. The strategies that Light Box advocates are taken from Positive Psychology's evidence base. Light Box believes that mental health applies to all people, and learning how to invest in it can improve the quality of any person’s life.

Misfits Theatre Company is a theatre and social group led by people with learning difficulties.Through a Service Level Agreement with NHS Bristol PublicHealth a group of six actors with learning difficulties wereemployed by The Misfits to create educational performancepieces for commissioned training work.

Myrtle Theatre’s ‘A Letter to That’s Life!’was a collaboration with the Meriton – a specialist school inBristol for young parents – and playwright Catherine Johnsonto create a theatreproject and performance for an invited audience. Focusing on partnershipviolence and abusive relationships, the project gave the students anopportunity to explore ways to develop healthy and respectfulrelationships and to recognise how they and their child have a right to befreefrom abuse.

Print on Prescription at Double Elephant Print Workshopmakes printmaking accessible to adults dealing with mental health issues and goes beyond short-term participatory art projects. Double Elephant is a community printmaking resource and this project ensures the wider community can access it on an on-going basis. Their portable print workshop and press enables them to take printmaking into hospital and community centre environments too.

Somerset Film’s JUMPcuts : Moving On is a relationships & sexuality

training DVD commissioned by the Somerset Partnership NHS Foundation

Trust and co-produced with Biggerhouse Films. The DVD includes 5 real

life stories about relationships and sexuality from people with a learning

difficulty. The underlying principle of the project was to involve individuals

with learning difficulties in the whole process of making the work.

Individual Award

Louisa Newman is responsible for the development and management of Artshine, the arts on referral service for the Inner City of Bristol. She has taken Artshine from fledgling idea, to popular and respected project, embedding arts on referral as a valued service within the surgeries and health centres covering the Inner City & East Bristol area. In the past year there have been 4 Artshine groups running, serving 14 practices with approximately 125,000 registered patients.

Stephen Pettet-Smith has led Exeter HealthCare Arts for 14 years. During that time he has negotiated, fund-raised and delivered a range of projects throughout the hospital from exterior new build and refurbishment to exterior landscape schemes with artist’s craftspeople and architects. A key part of his work has been to embed ‘Arts & Culture’ into the philosophy, community and fabric of the hospital. He has led the development of participatory projects with patients, staff and families.

Kamina Walton is a photographic artist whose energies during the last 12 months have been focused on two quite different arts and health projects: the touring of her solo exhibition Heavy Words stories from the cervix and the involvement in an arts and research project, Body Culture, with Dr Emma Rich from Bath University.

Find out more about Professor Zeki's research at

The sponsors

Fine Family Foundation

M Shed

Altro Ltd