From a Hug in a Mug to a Circle of Joy: Reflections on an Arts and Wellbeing Chapter
Last week, marked the end of Icon’s Arts and Wellbeing Project (for now!). I have been developing and delivering weekly workshops for this project since May, and saying goodbye to everyone was bittersweet. This group was funded by the Creative Health Medway Place Partnership programme in partnership with Icon Theatre. The goal was to work with vulnerable, socially isolated, and hard-to-reach people in Chatham, with the aim of reducing social isolation and improving participants’ wellbeing. Easy, right?
The project started as a ‘Hug in a Mug’ coffee morning, with chats, jigsaws and board games. Then I joined and started introducing games to play at the table, such as ‘Guess Who?’ and ice-breakers. Over time, the sessions became a bit more creative, and we moved into a hall to do drama and improvisation games and activities. Later, we introduced creative writing and role-play games like ‘Mafia’.
At the end of every session, I always went around the circle and asked everyone for one word or phrase to describe how they were feeling. I collected these words into a word cloud (see gallery below). There is no denying that trying to measure people’s wellbeing and the impact of creative activities on it is really complicated, but I’m pleased to see that the word that came up most often was ‘happy’.
I’ve loved getting to know this group of people; there has been so much laughter, joy and connection. Many of the group commented how sad they were that the workshops are over (for now!).Here are some learnings that I think helped us:
- Consistency– the project ran every Wednesday morning since March; it was long enough to establish strong relationships and a feeling of safety. Too many community projects are short-term (including ours), which makes it hard to establish meaningful relationships.
- Partnerships– Some people in the group were already connected to existing mental health groups at our venue, which made attending our sessions far less daunting.
- Trauma-Informed Facilitation – I have been training in trauma-informed facilitation through courses and self-led study since 2024, and it has had a huge impact on my work. Key to this was ensuring the group had choice at every point of the project: over activities, whether they chose to participate, when they wanted to rest and talk, and when it was time to stop.
I am really grateful to Icon for allowing us to be so responsive with the group. There were moments when we had to shift our original goals because it was clear we needed to do what was best for the people in the room.
I want to say a huge thank you to Icon, whom I have loved working for, to Chloe and Hannah, best team ever! And to our participants for trusting me every week to lead the group, for showing up, playing and always being up for trying a new game!
Our wonderful evaluator, Susan Potter, brought along scribe Tom Bradshaw to document our final day and reflect on the project-have a look at this brilliant image he made (below!)
By Phoebe Marsh,
Lead Facilitator
If you’re interested in finding out more, or taking part in this project in future, please visit >>>
Thank you to Medway Council and Arts Council England for supporting this project.
