Prema

A small, independent rural arts centre, Prema seeks to make participation, experiment and education accessible to the many communities with whom it collaborates. Prema is located in the rural town of Uley and attracted participants from surrounding rural Gloucestershire and from the town of Bourton-on-the-Water. Many sessions took place in village halls or community spaces close to the GP surgeries to maximise the numbers able to attend.

The LifeSIZE project was devised to offer a series of workshops to patients with longer-term medical conditions and enduring mental health problems within the County Council’s Art Lift project. Prema particularly wanted to include patients prevented, due to their heath difficulties, from enjoying and taking part in the mainstream life of their community. Art Lift seeks to help these patients recapture a sense of well-being and self-esteem and to re-integrate in their communities.

A Whale of A Time

For Prema this process began by offering patients the opportunity to come along to an afternoon’s drawing celebration with their families and friends, alongside people from a variety of backgrounds and walks of life. A Whale of a Time was Prema’s public Big Draw event. The aim was to provide a safe environment for everyone to develop new skills, to think big, and to have lots of fun. Prema also hoped to inspire the Art Lift groups to run their own Big Draw events in the future.

The lead artist, Imogen Harvey-Lewis supported participants to work at their own level and to overcome fears of getting their drawings ’right or wrong’. Prema was able to borrow animal exhibits from a local museum in Cheltenham, so plenty of fauna was at hand for inspiration. Activities were planned not to put-off participants at the start: drawing and decorating colourful insects, butterflies and larger-scale drawings such as stoats, badgers, and fox cubs. The afternoon of drawing was accompanied by tea, cakes, and live music from the Tippett Quartet.

Participants gained a sense of achievement and of taking part. For the Art Lift patients it was another step in getting out of the house and re-integrating with the wider world. For many of them it was significant to try new things and to show family and friends that they can be confident and capable members of the community.

LifeSIZE workshop sessions

The LifeSIZE sessions were well attended. As the project partner, the steering group for Art Lift (representing GPs, the County Council, and the Primary Care Trust) were impressed at how a relatively small, energetic project can inspire people and capture a sense of celebration and focus. Their eight artists felt inspired to go on to run satellite sessions for the Big Draw next year. Prema noted that the patients themselves expressed a real sense of achievement and a thirst to reach out to new and perhaps challenging creative opportunities in the future. Some participants felt ready to try other group activities. A few thought about signing up for creative arts courses at other arts venues. Some suggested that they would like a self-running group so that they could continue to meet after the activity.