Creative Alternatives 10 Year Anniversary

I'm writing this blog on the occasion of our Arts on Prescription project, delivered via Creative Alternatives (CA), which is having its ten-year anniversary celebration. Ten years is a grand occasion for any type of project in times where funding has fluctuated and priorities change. But for an arts project it's a really special occasion, because you know it must be doing something right.

An Arts on Prescription service simply defined, looks to deliver arts-based sessions that helps transform lives through creativity, compassion, and non-clinical mental health support. Participants take part in a creative programme integrating different art-forms, expressive writing, and mindfulness practices. With sessions focused more on relaxation and enjoyment rather than perfecting technique, the programme has been credited with improving wellbeing, reducing isolation, and fostering person centred support that extends beyond the group environment. People can either self-refer or be referred in via a health or social care professional, and increasingly its reputation means that word of mouth is one of the most important ways it recruits.

The project was initially set up in 2006 in Sefton, and the programme expanded to St Helens in 2015, offering a unique model of care that places creativity before clinical labels. Over the past ten years, the St Helens programme run by CA is now an award-winning arts and wellbeing service and has provided hundreds of adult residents across the town living with stress, anxiety, and/or depression with a safe, supportive space to connect and heal through the arts.

We have recently extended the contract for the project for three years, working together with our main funder for the project, Public Health and for my myself it's been on one of the most rewarding projects we are involved in. Looking ahead, the team plans to expand its creative offer, build new partnerships, and establish a volunteer programme, enabling participants to co-create the service's future and helping them to stay well for longer.

The celebration event takes place on Friday 10^th October, which appropriately is also World Mental Health Day. The CA team will be hosting a special event to mark 10 years of delivering the service in the borough which will be attended by participants, referral partners and key members of St Helens Borough Council. As part of the event there will be an exhibition that will showcase some of the artworks created over the last ten years by CA participants and I'm really pleased to say that following the celebration, the exhibition will be going on tour around our libraries. I'd urge you to take a look and see the quality of the work and appreciate the effort that's gone into creating it. And if you'd like to find out more about the programme visit: www.creativealternatives.org.uk.

Creative Alternatives is managed by Alef Trust and commissioned through St Helens Borough Council's Public Health Service and supported by the Arts in Libraries programme for the borough.