UNIT 8; PROCESS

Project Proposal:

Aims: To create an educational exhibition about art therapy, using visual pieces to tell stories of clients, therapists and organisers within Hart Club. To educate the audience about the impacts of art therapy, how it works and how it impacts people with mental health issues. To encourage the audience to question their own assumptions of what is art, who can be an artist, and how art can benefit a community. I want to tell a story, not in the typical sense with a beginning a middle and an end; but instead plan to collect a range of small 'stories' gathering opinions on the correlations between art and mental health.

For this project I want to work mainly in collage as I felt it would be a way for the people I worked with to remain anonymous if they pleased. I also felt this was fitting with the theme of 'story telling' as I am collecting images and experiences and arranging them to communicate thoughts and feelings, much like my creative and research process for this project. I was inspired by artists such as:

Robert Rauschenberg

I like how Rauschenberg's mixed media collages convey the emotions of key events and the thoughts and feelings which surround them.

Creative process plan:

• Work with Hart Club to create a workshop which encourages their clients to visually respond to a series of questions through collage; What is art to you? How has Hart Club changed your life? Who/What inspires your creativity?
• Collect and develop visual responses to these questions.
• Interview the lead art therapist working with the dementia art group, Into the Grey. Asking her a series of questions which investigate how art therapy works, why art therapy is important to both herself and the community, and what they consider art.
• Interview the leader of Hart Club with similar questions.
• Create visual response based on these interviews. 
• Collect research from art students at UAL who may be suffering from mental health issues, to investigate how their artwork and creativity helps the manage their mental health. 

Exhibition Plan:

• An art wall inspired by the Hart Club interior, collecting different photo frames to display all visual responses collected. 
• Posters educating on art therapy, mental health in the UK and dementia stats. 
• Interactive response wall, asking the audience similar questions to our investigative process. 

Creating an Advertisement Poster

After the Unit 4 hand in one of my main goals for Unit 6 was to develop my photoshop skills. The advertising poster for the Peckham Levels Event was the perfect opportunity to do so. As the event is a South London Story Lab I wanted to use collage to combine the ideas of South London and story telling, collecting imagery on pinterest of different ways stories are told, reading, newspapers, speaking etc. I also used Flashbak to find old photos of South London, correlating with the idea of a 'story' being a past event.

I liked my intial poster design here, however felt it didn't represent the aspect of South London, and the editing skills could be improved.

I liked this final design, however prefer the above copy as the information is less cramped. I had to submit the second design as I had to include all the information in the poster brief.

PEER FEEDBACK:

The writing in this design is a bit too much to digest, consider formatting it separately in order to make the text flow with the collage. Consider using fading/blurring techniques to dampen the Brixton Station sign as it looks like a further piece of text. 

Collecting Further Research

Wanting to explore the stories of those who experience mental health issues and engage in art, I decided to conduct a survey targeted at UAL students to ask them if they have suffered with mental health issues, what therapies have been offered to them, how they think art impacts their mental health and how they define 'art' and 'an artist'. The purpose of this survey was to collect data from people who consider themselves to be artists to compare to the clients at Hart Club who claimed not to consider themselves artists, how does this label change how art is viewed and how art makes one feel?

25 people responded to the survey and the results are as follows. 

1. Do you suffer from a mental health condition?

85% of responses said they do suffer from a mental health condition, most of the responses said depression and anxiety, other mental illnesses came up such as personality disorders OCD and eating disorders. 

2. Do you consider yourself an artist?

3. How do you feel art impacts your mental health?

For this question I received a range of responses, some telling me that art was escapism, a stress relief, and others telling me it made them anxious due to university deadlines, critics and feelings of self-doubt. I wonder if I received these negative results as 85% of the people I asked considered themselves artists, maybe without the pressure of having to define yourself as an artist, there is more ways for art to do good to your wellbeing.

• "It just helps me express how I feel, and in a way it helps me to cope."
• "sometimes it stresses me out because I feel it should be better than it is. When I am at my very worst I don't find it possible to do any artwork."
• "My art is a distraction."
• "It can sometimes act as an outlet that lets me express inner thoughts and emotions that can be difficult to talk about."
• "Doing art calms my mind, especially if it doesn't matter how the outcomes turns out."
• "To be an artist means you are subject to opinions. Opinions that make you feel wank"
• "I need art as a tool to express abstract thoughts and feelings. To have a relief from stress. It's personal like keeping a diary. It's escapism when needed. It's something I can treasure and trust. It belongs to me."
• "Awakens parts of me I didn't know were broken."

4. If you have a mental health condition, what therapies have been offered to you?

5. What therapies / treatments would you be interested in engaging with if they were offered to you?

My results to this question were quite interesting as 44% of people said they would be interested in art-therapy or occupational therapy, but only 1 person said they had been offered it in the previous question. Is there a lack of opportunities to receive art therapy - something to keep in mind when interviewing the art therapist.

6. How would you define art?

• "Art is something which tells a story, whether it's an emotion or a block of colour."
• "A method of exploring the world."
• "Something which makes you feel."
• "Expression."
• "Art is a creative process which converts thoughts/feelings/ideas into a visual/auditory/tactile object."
• "Art defines everything in the world around us."

7. Can anyone be an artist?

Yes (70%): 

• "We are all artists from nature; we create and leave marks as a natural instinct."
• "Art is subjective, anything can be art."
• "If we start putting limitations on something everyone wants to do and can do, then I think we'd be a little lost."

No (16%) :

• "If everyone is an artist then we wouldn't have true artists."
• "Art requires talent and skill."

Unsure (12%): 

• "I struggle to be recognised as an artist, so perhaps it isn't possible for everyone."

Conclusion:

I think I've captured a range of results here. Most people agree that art can be done by anyone, yet other's have a more narrow-minded attitude toward art. It is interesting as all of the responses to question 6 were that art could objectively be anything so therefore to say not everyone can be an artist would be against their own logic. It will be interesting to ask similar questions to the clients at Hart Club who don't consider themselves artists. 

As someone with a diagnosed mental health issue I think my responses regarding therapies and treatments are quite sad, 44% of people said they would have liked to be offered occupational therapies, yet only one person claimed to have already been offered this. There are issues within the mental health services in the UK which limit the access to different therapies. 

From these results I plan to feature some of my favourite responses in designs for the exhibition, comparing them to the responses from the clients at Hart Club top gain a better understanding of how art and mental health correlate.

Art Responses to Survey Results

I felt I had a really nice range of information collected from my survey, with a couple of really nice quotes from students about how they felt art and mental health correlate. Wanting to expand my discipline within digital illustration, I decided to make some collages from these results, collecting key imagery of some of the moods and emotions discussed.

I really liked the graphic quality of these pieces, connecting them all together with the grain filter, I feel they would work really well as larger scale prints. I also used these designs to inspire the creators at The Great Grey when creating their own collages.

Art workshop with The Great Grey


We first sat in for a session with the group here, and then we began to formulate our own workshop.

To formulate a lesson plan with the group, I first looked at the above collage research. I felt that collage would be the best approach for the group, because it meant that the participants could still remain anonymous if they wanted. Cress, the art therapist for The Great Grey, completely agreed, telling me the group worked best when they were given something tactile. 

This is probably my favourite piece from the workshop. I worked 1:1 with Christina to make this collage. Christina is an amazing artist, yet she can be very cheeky! At the end of the session she told me she couldn't put her work with everyone else's, "Because they will get jealous." She said.

The work from this session was amazing. The whole group got really involved with the task, with some of the creators making numerous collages. We tried to get the group to answer questions about how art made them feel, however most of them got carried away with the collaging without answering this question. Some had really interesting stories behind their work:

This piece by Janet is 'meant to represent that the woman feels she is not beautiful, so she surrounds herself with beautiful things. That's why she is grey, and around her is colourful.

In just the first session I had 14 pieces of work. Knowing we were already stretched for exhibition space, this meant if I were to display the works in a framed exhibition format, I would have to cut out some participants work. This we didn't want to do as it went against our whole premise, everyone can be an artist, as we would be judging who's was good/bad. We therefore decided as a group to instead transform the project into a publication, or magazine. We felt this would be best as we could then include our interviews with Cress and Helen, pieces of our own work, and also information about the film the other members of my group were making. We felt this would tie the film and the studio work together, as we could use the magazine to discuss the project as a whole. 

From this first session, we also spoke to Helen about how herself and the Art Therapist, Cress, thought it went. They said although the group was making some fantastic work, some members of the group were struggling, as they found the large amount of resources overwhelming, and some struggled with elements of cutting and sticking. 

Action Plan from first Hart Session:

• Begin to scan in and heighten each edit, so it agrees with a set format in preparation for printing as a publication.
• Create other elements of the magazine such as; Helen's Interview, Cress's interview, our own 'bios' about art and mental health, prints from survey, information about film, front and back cover. 
• Host another workshop, using plain patterned, coloured and textured paper, in order to make the session accessible to the entire group. Prepare pre-cut elements in order to assist those with limited movement abilities. 

Interview With Helen 

We met with Helen on the 03.03 to discuss Hart Club in general, The Great Grey, and what she describes as her ideas of neurodiversity:

How did Hart Club come to be?

"After leaving UAL I was working as a curator in a gallery space which took open-admissions, it was in 2017 when I was commissioned to organise an exhibition for an amazing group the Camberwell Incredibles, which celebrated neurodiversity within the arts. The work was incredible. This was the first time since leaving art school I felt truly inspired.

"This group was making these amazing pieces of work, stuff that you would see in major art galleries. But in the twenty years the group had been working together, they had never had an exhibition. I went home that night and it kept replaying in my mind, they had never had an exhibition.

"This was where Hart was born. I wanted to make a space which enabled artists who think, communicate and create differently. A space which is accessible to everyone. Where people could have the opportunity to display their work in a gallery, who would never be given that opportunity elsewhere."

Hart Club's exhibition in collaboration with Paul Wright, Carry on Delboy

What is neurodiversity?

"Neurodiversity basically means everyone's way of thinking. In the same way we have biodiversity, meaning every living thing. neurodiversity is every different way of thinking. I feel there is so much negativity surrounding the world disabled. As someone who is not disabled, I would never police the world, I know that it can be really empowering for some, but at the same time it is not for me to place that word upon someone.

"Disability implies that one is not able. Whereas it is often the world around them not being accessible, which disables them. And that needs to change. When creating Hart Club, we wanted to create a space which enables everyone. Because that's what neurodiversity is, everyone."

What is The Great Grey?

"Initially The Great Grey is a group which wasn't based in Hart, it was ran by my good friend Cress, in various locations. The group worked with people in the early stages of dementia diagnosis, and for this reason it was really difficult on the group for them to keep changing locations. So that's when The Great Grey came to Hart. 

"We run the group every Tuesday. Although we are working with an art therapist, its less of a therapy and more of a community really. At Heart We try to create an environment which is more like a collective. And I think that's the most important thing about this group, it's a family, people know where you are going to be, someone always knows, and cares."

What is a piece you think most defines Hart Club?

"this piece was created by two artists, Andy and Donal. I think it really represents Hart in the way that we like the bring people together who wouldn't normally interact, so they can collaborate and create together. Andy's line work is very unplanned, he liked to just throw his work onto the paper, and these amazing pieces come out. Whereas Donal is the opposite, he studied graphics as a degree, and his work is very meticulously planned out. So Andy created the lines with his free way of mark-making, and Donal used his meticulous planning to apply it to the canvas. 

"Whats so beautiful about this piece is that it couldn't exist without both artists. It is both Andy and Donal, but not one alone. We bring people together, that's what we do."

What are your aims for the future of Hart Club?

"I think there is still a lot which needs to be challenged in the art world. Think about it, how many neurodiverse people are on your course, not many. The industry is very exclusive to one type of person, and that needs to change.

"You're still worthy and valuable, even if you don't tick every box. And this is where our education is failing us. How is it that the only thing people value us on if you're good at everything across the board. In order to bring people up we have to work together. It's not about the individual and their ego. We need to challenge what we know about art, who can create, who we celebrate."

This is my initial interview design from Helen, taking some of our favourite quotes from what we spoke about. I sent this to Helen who said she would prefer if we used her pictures instead:

This is the final design for the 2 page spread of Helen's interview, featuring her chosen pictures and text. 

Edited Work by The Great Grey

In order to tie all of the different styles and editing together I really liked the effect of the grain filter on photoshop. So went through each scan from the first session, enhancing the colours, giving each a title, and applying the grain. Note that for each design we collected a consent form due to safeguarding regulations, every member of the group consented to their work being shown at both the exhibition and for marking, yet some wished to remain anonymous.

Here are some examples:

Magazine cover

For the cover of my magazine I wanted to include all the elements which we discussed with Helen about what Hart represents; community, creation and collaboration. I wanted to make it seem as though all the hands were working together to hold the different brushes, and layered different mark-making images I found to represent the collaboration of ideas. 

For this project I used all found imagery, wanting to primarily focus on enhancing my photoshop skills, and functional illustration skills - with community workshop running. In future projects I would have loved to have the time to collect my own images.

2nd Workshop Session

After our discussion with Helen last week, for our second workshop session we followed her advice in stripping back the session. Instead of working with magazines, we collected a lot of materials which included different patterned, textured and coloured paper, fabric materials, and things such as beads. Before the session we cut out a lot of different shapes, triangles, circles, stars etc. 

I actually struggled with this workshop as taking tasks from an abstract position is not my strong point, instead I decided to be led by the group, helping them create and creating myself at the same time. 

We tried to hone in again on the question How Does Art Make You Feel? 

Although this workshop was fun for some of the creators, I think some members of the group struggled to create as much as last week as they were limited for inspiration. Others managed the task a lot better than the previous week as they were less stimulated and able to work more focused. 

Again I think once the group got stuck in, they mostly didn't focus on the question we had set. But while working we had some really lovely conversations with the group. Here are some of the great things they said about hart club:

"I began coming to this group for my friend after her diagnosis. I never saw myself going to a community group, and honestly never expected it to be something I would enjoy. But now I love coming, I'm very close with the whole group, and I look forward to coming each week."

"This group has really helped me, I come just to see everyone for a natter, we are all friends."

"I mainly come here for my husband because of his diagnosis. We have been married for sixty-three years. Yes, it really helps me, I just get to have fun."

This was our last week with the group and it was sad to say goodbye to everybody, they created some amazing pieces of work and it's been such a great experience for myself. I feel as though working with the group has given me a better understanding of the practical field I want to go into with my illustration, hopefully moving into art therapy. It's allowed me to apply techniques in my own learning to real-life situations.