Learn to practice relaxation exercises and art for self-care at The Salvation Army in Ivybridge. Each session includes five minutes of guided mindfulness, five minutes of mindful drawing, a simple art project, and the opportunity to chat and relax.
This weekly art group gives people the opportunity to share their feelings, practice mindfulness, create art, relax and chat. Doodle Your Recovery:
Improves mental health
Improves social connection
Teaches new skills (relaxation exercises and art for self care).
We start with a ‘check in’ to see how everyone is feeling. There is no obligation to speak if you don’t want to. This is followed by some guided mindfulness, then a simple art project which anyone can do e.g., drawing Zentangles or paisley, or making a greeting card.
We end the group with a ‘check out’ to share how everyone is feeling after practicing mindfulness and making art.
This free 6 week, in-person course will start on Tuesday 22nd June, then 29th June, 6th, 13th, 20th and 27th July.
Mindful Art Club has provided a lifeline to people across Plymouth facing mental health challenges – and now our group is back operating in the community.
For Mental Health Awareness Week Plymouth Live has published a feature article explaining that we were gutted when a drug and alcohol rehab centre announced its shock closure two years ago.
“Having worked at Broadreach House for several years, (Emma and Peggy) had been able to support people from all walks of life and had seen first-hand how beneficial different creative activities could be for people struggling with their mental health and other issues.
Wanting to continue to serve the community and support people facing challenges in their lives, the colleagues teamed up to launch a “mindfulness art club” to support people manage their anxiety, stress and other mental health issues in a relaxed and safe creative environment.
The club became particularly popular at the start of 2020 and soon became a lifeline for members, with many people relishing the opportunity to connect with others in a non-judgemental environment while being able to talk freely about how they’re feeling and any stresses or anxieties in their lives.”
The retreat takes place in the picturesque village of Plympton St Maurice, near Plymouth, in South Devon. Outdoor activities are held in public green spaces; lunch is served in the local Guildhall. Most of the event is outdoors but can be moved to our indoor venue in the case of rain.
Includes coffees, teas and lunch of crusty bread, homemade cakes and a selection of cheeses, houmous, olives and fruit.
Sometimes, anxiety can make it difficult to get out of bed in the morning. You wake up with a stomach ache, and an overwhelming feeling of dread. Everything just feels “too much.”
It was on a day like this, when I was suffering with (what I now know) was an anxiety disorder, that I decided to try to lift my mood by repeating the mantra, “I am enough” to myself. I was also trying something new. I had decided to start drawing little cartoons to illustrate my mental health struggles. Because I had noticed that when I was drawing, absorbed in creativity, that was the only time that my head wasn’t busy with anxious overthinking. Creativity calmed my mind.
“I am enough.”
If you say it fast enough it sounds like “I am an oeuf.” Oeuf is French for egg. I grabbed a chalk board we have in the kitchen and spontaneously drew a serene-looking egg who believed that he was enough. Underneath him I wrote,
“I am an oeuf.”
It made me smile. So I got into drawing this little egg character, in various different situations.
And after a lot more doodling, colouring, meditating, chats with friends, counselling and cognitive behavioural therapy, I eventually overcame that pesky anxiety.
A few years later, Emma and I decided to start our mindful art business, and when we needed a logo it seemed appropriate to me to use the egg. Because I am an oeuf.
You are enough.
We are enough.
So shine like an egg.
And if you want to try using mindfulness and creativity to calm your busy mind today, grab yourself a bundle of free colouring pages and doodling printables by entering your email here.
Our mindful art courses at The Sunflower Women’s Centre are six weeks long, and free of charge to the participants, thanks to funding from The Sunflower Women’s Centre, and funding from Comic Relief. Each weekly session is an hour and a half long.
Phone The Sunflower Women’s Centre to get on the waiting list. Tel: 01752 977614 (Leave a message).
What to bring: Your own felt tip pens, hand sanitiser if you wish. Coffee and tea is provided.
The Sunflower Women’s Centre, The Gables, 29 Sutherland Road, Plymouth, PL4 6BW.
It’s now one year since the first coronavirus lockdown. This Facebook Live was our first attempt at offering our creative mental health sessions online. We hadn’t yet learned to use Zoom! Since then we have continued to support mental health and combat social isolation with socially distant groups, outdoor retreats and online sessions. There is a rich archive of 45 videos on our Facebook page if you want to try mindful art at home, for free, at any time. We offer creativity and company to anyone struggling in the Plymouth area, in Devon, in these difficult times.
In this video Peggy reads out live comments from people reacting to their very first day in UK lockdown, and viewers share different experiences of their first socially distanced Mothers Day.
Listen now: Trace Jared-Davis and Emma Sprawson talk about why Mindful Art Club is different, and why social connections are now more important than ever. You will also learn why you don’t need to be Van Gogh to join in with this art club.
This interview was first broadcast on Omnium Radio, Plymouths Community Radio on o5th March 2021. The full interview is below.
When Emma and Peggy suddenly lost the jobs they loved, they started a business on a shoestring, to offer mindful art groups, support mental health and tackle social isolation in the Plymouth area.
Mental health services were already overstretched and the pandemic
has made that even worse. Mindful Art Club gives people a way to access help
and support immediately, without a waiting list, and without finances being a
barrier to access.
Emma and I are helping to create a world where peer support, mindfulness, creative activities, and social connection is more easily available in local communities.
Peggy Melmoth
Watch Now:
If you’ve ever felt stressed, anxious or depressed, we have a free downloadable mindful colouring bundle with zen doodling exercises for you. Just enter your email now to receive our colouring bundle today, and we will write to you monthly to let you know about our latest free and low-cost events in the Plymouth area.
Zen doodling is a kind of meditative drawing practice which can be used to easily calm your mind. Zen doodles are just repeating patterns; no artistic talent is required.
Zen doodling combines meditation and art. Learn to practice relaxation exercises and art for self-care. The session includes five minutes of guided mindfulness, a simple art project that can be done at home just with felt tip pens, and the opportunity to chat while we are making the zen doodles and to relax.
In this course you will create zen doodles while learning about the philosophy and benefits of zen doodling:
Improves mental health
Improves social connection
Teaches new skills (relaxation exercises and art for self- care).
We start with a ‘check in’ to see how everyone is feeling. There is no obligation to speak if you don’t want to. We end the group with a ‘check out’ to share how everyone is feeling after making zen doodles.
This online, three week course will start on Thursday 4th March, then the 11th and 18th March.
We are pleased to have been granted new funding to offer mindful art sessions to any Plymouth women in need of support.
The Comic Relief Community Fund offer help for projects that are in line with their theme of Mental Health Matters. These are projects that support good mental health in communities, improve access to support and tackle stigma and discrimination.
This funding will allow us to deliver 12 weekly mindful art groups at The Sunflower Women’s Centre. The issues being tackled are social isolation and poor mental health. We address these problems by using creative activities to make it easier for clients to engage in meaningful conversations.
The Sunflower is a trauma-informed women’s wellbeing hub, providing opportunities for any woman who has support needs. Women receive support in addressing and resolving substance abuse, childhood trauma, criminogenic behaviours, domestic violence or poor mental health. The centre offers a range of therapeutic activities, accredited programmes and practical support in a safe, nurturing, substance-free and valuing space for women to move from their pasts, develop their skills, regain their self-worth and go on to flourish and thrive. The Sunflower Centre has over 500 registered service users.
Mindful Art Club will offer these women peer support for common mental health issues such as anxiety and depression. New friendships are formed in our groups which combat social isolation, and we will also teach new skills such as how to use mindfulness and art for self care.
We would not have received this funding without the generous help and support of the staff at The Sunflower Women’s Centre, and the funding advisors at POP. POP ideas is a service delivered by POP+ and Iridescent Ideas CIC that provides advice for small, large, new or established voluntary, community and social enterprise organisations in Plymouth.
Page 10, Plymouth Chronicle January 2021
If you’d like a place on one of these groups after the current lockdown ends, you will need to register with The Sunflower Women’s Centre and ask to be added to the waiting list for Mindful Art Club. Their staff is limited during lockdown, but you can leave a message at 01752 977614 . Groups at The Sunflower Centre are small, socially distanced, and organised with a number of Covid-19 safety measures in place. These sessions are permitted by current law, as support groups.
Here’s what some of our previous clients at The Sunflower Centre have said about us:
“I have found this group very helpful in my recovery. My biggest problem is ISOLATION. So to have this group is a lifeline. I also struggle with substance misuse, although, (thanks to help), I am clean and sober. It is nice to have a space that is non-judgmental where we can check in and connect. I love art anyway, and find it very relaxing and engaging. But it’s so much more therapeutic to do it with others. Many thanks.”
