Rotary meeting : Speaker - Corinne Marsh, Artistic Director, Art Well : Club Host - Rev John Dawson : Speakers Host - Kevin Vickers

artWell was established as a not for profit community interest company based in Basingstoke in February 2019.

Corinne Marsh is an artist whose multidisciplinary practice was anchored in research on the emotion of fear and the consequences of how this emotion manifested in an individual's experiences, their relationships and connection to the wider society.

Creative activities enabled Corinne to overcome her own mental health difficulties, and this has helped her to understand the power that art can have in creating positive change.

Practical experience working within Community Mental Health Team settings, together with further research and study into psychological processes enabled Corinne to confidently build the initial project.

This approach has since been refined and the organisation expanded to work with all sectors of the community, providing the necessary passion and commitment to build on initial time-limited projects to evolve the organisation to the present day.

With no clinical agenda, artWell aims not to analyse the creative work but seeks to empower people through encouraging them to use the creativity that they were born with in order to share the joy of creative activity and believe in themselves.

A multidisciplinary approach is key, with the organisation linking with a wonderful variety of talented artists from many different backgrounds and disciplines.

This provides unique opportunities for our members to discover their interests and unique creative language in the array of work they produce.
As our roots are through lived experience and we value these, giving our workshops a genuine and exciting atmosphere of mutual learning, shared experiences to overcome and prevent mental unwellness.

Our psychologically informed underpinning of each workshop creates the best practice and optimises the member experience both in terms of creative activity and enabling people to aspire and fulfil potential. Our dialogues are open and are guided to meet the needs of those with whom we work. Our testimonials speak for themselves.

With our focus on mental wellbeing we see that positive use of the creative mind is an essential element in overcoming and preventing mental unwellness. We have had the priviledge of working with survivors of some of the toughest life challenges these are not limited to but include homelessness, domestic abuse, probation, veterans and mental health.

Together, with her Co-Directors, we are proud to have survived our own
challenges which we feel better places us to understand and connect with our participants offering them an opportunity to be with people who 'get it' without needing to talk about ‘it’.

• promotes positive mental health and wellbeing across the whole community through creative learning.
• proud to have survived our own lived challenges which we feel is an advantage in working with our diverse range of members.
• We offer Peer Support and Volunteering opportunities and an outreach service.