Visit to Bristol
On Friday March 18th Sarah Goodey, Prue Thimbleby and Alex Bowen visited an Arts on prescription project in Bristol.
The project in Bristol started as Artshine funded by Public Health/NHS but due to changes (Public Health in England moved to local authorities and a key supporter was on maternity leave) there was a break in funding, even though there had been an excellent evaluation report. The result was that two different projects eventually developed: Artshine and Wellbeing Arts. Both groups are for people with mental ill health – Artshine is for people who tend to be more severely ill than those attending Wellbeing Arts.
Julie Matthews works as an artist for both projects and we are very grateful to her for generously sharing her processes and insights.
Artshine is a Bristol project funded by Psychology Therapies NHS and led by artist Julie Matthews & Nick Moore at Wellspring Healthy Living Centre (2 hours x 12 week course with referrals from mental health team and assessment using GAD PH7 at weeks 1,6 and 12)
Wellbeing Arts is a project funded by Public Health Bristol and has weekly groups in three locations led by Julie Matthews and Barbara Disney (2 hours x 16 week course with referrals from any health professional and assessment forms adapted from Artlift forms using the Warwick Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale (WEMWBS) at weeks 1, 8 and 16 – clients have an ID number so forms are anonymous and will be included with Artlift’s large scale evaluation)
Shine On is a weekly peer led group at Wellspring centre for previous Artshine clients - £2 per person, no time limit
Shine@Mshed is a fortnightly opportunity for people who have been to previous arts on prescription projects in Bristol
Other follow on opportunities are available via a range of community workers and signposting
Support at Wellspring Centre is available from Shanti Sherson who is the Arts manager and deals with all referrals and clients records.
Clinical supervision is available monthly, funded as part of the Public Health (PH) funding, and open to all arts on prescription practitioners in Bristol area. The PH funding also has a budget for continuing professional development (CPD)
Learning points
It takes time to set up – PH money was available in early 2014 but sessions (Wellbeing Arts) didn’t start until April 2015 – many taster groups and much partnership building was needed first. Three projects now run with two artists – one artist (Barbara Disney) specialises in working with the Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) community which was shown to be a particular need through the initial Artshine evaluation. Twelve people are booked per class but each week the number will be around eight participants.
It is really helpful to have space in a health centre rather than a separate building
Julie creates the ID numbers based on the host centre name e.g. HHC 001 for Horfield Health Centre. Any correspondence regarding a client uses their ID number or is via password protected spreadsheet etc. Once a client has finished their course and the forms are ready to go to Artlift ( is the Gloucester based project currently led by Thrisha Haldar) for evaluation all identifying info is blacked out. The ID number is then used to track information. The joining up of several projects using the same evaluation method is very valuable in building evidence. We need to talk to Thrisha at Artlift about any ethical permissions that Artlift or their University partners have been through and if our South Wales projects can contribute the same data to their evaluation.
Consent forms are signed for photographs only - Julie is looking into changing the referral form to one which includes overall consent for taking part
All patient information is kept in locked filing cabinets
Julie personally contacts all new group members before the group starts
Julie described an interesting day long activity day which Artlift use to select artists to run groups
