Annis Joslin

Commissioned by Sussex Partnership arts and health programme Make Your Mark to deliver a collaborative art project “What Makes Your Heart Sing?” 

 

(Sussex Partnership is a NHS Foundation Trust  and provides mental health and learning disability services to the people of Brighton and Hove,  East Sussex and West Sussex and Hamphire)

 

The project took as its starting point the question ‘What inspires you?’ or ‘What Makes Your Heart Sing? 

 

Through a series of pop-up events and workshops service users, staff and carers were invited to bring objects, for example, a memento, a treasured object, something they’d collected or found, a photograph, a letter or a newspaper clipping, and to tell the story about why it inspires them.

 

Participants were invited to photograph their object, write a short message or story about it and were led through a series of creative drawing tasks in response to the object.

 

The project involved over 50 participants and all the material created during the workshops was gathered and digitally processed to create a series of images which have been permanently exhibited across the learning spaces of Sussex Partnerships Trust. The idea of siting the work within the learning spaces was to remind staff (during training or reflection days) of our shared humanity, of the lives of the people they are working with and those who they hope to make a difference to.