Mind My Art

We are a small charity based in Dorset. Our ultimate aim is to support a strong sense of self-belief in our Beneficiaries and the importance of kindness and empathy when it come to others' personal situations and perspectives. We encourage people to enjoy creativity to express how they feel or would like to feel while working on a common  theme  and we exhibit their work.  All our projects are based on self-motivation and  stage exposure and there is no pressure what so ever to produce an artwork ( as we highlight the importance of  creativity as a stress management / self-therapeutic technique) Our participants work  independently from the group in order to strengthen their self-confidence, to avoid comparison, to highlight contrast of interpretation and uniqueness in togetherness. As excellence is not the aim of the exhibition but having the courage to express how they feel is, we ask them to exhibit some explanatory lines along with their artwork for others to read and to understand their perspectives.  Our amateur artists are coming from all walks of life, regardless of their personal situations, health, postcode areas and are given the opportunity to come together via creativity as they meet in a private exhibition and learn from each other's experience, creative style and perspective on the theme for the exhibition. We promote that way inclusion and integration therefore beneficiaries currently suffering with mental health issue can share as much or as little as they wish about their health situation with others who might have been through the same type of situation in the past. Their artwork is then shown to their friends, families and the members of the public with the option for the amateur artists to mingle with everyone as they wish while enjoying a hot beverage. The participants can sell their artwork as they wish, with the understanding that participating is the most important section of the project and actually to sell their artwork is only the cherry on the top of the cake. 

Participation is free of charge regardless of the participant's financial situation, in order to remove the financial barrier but also another one preventing empathy. All creative medium are welcome. We are not an art group, meeting regularly, a creative teaching or a therapy group. We do not provide financial support for transport, equipment, material but our Therapeutic |Coordinator provides support by listening to our participants during the development stage of the artwork  and we organise the exhibition.   By encouraging  self-motivation we also support resilience, self-realisation and of course self-belief which we hope our beneficiaries will take with them when facing other situations in their lives once the project is over. At the end of our exhibition, we ask our participants to reassess their reasons/ objectives for taking part in our project and we invite them to join the following project and in that way to create for themselves a small community within a bigger community where creativity is the only point in common.   

As for the exhibition's visitors, we provide them with the opportunity to slow down as their look at their artworks and read the explanatory notes , to assess where they are themselves with their mental health, to open up with kindness and empathy to other people's perspectives, situation and  art style .

Supporting us, does mean we can carry on helping everyone ( except professional artists) to have their say in a creative way. Our current project is " All lives are beautiful" and covers so many perspectives... more current subjects like Black lives matter, the environments, Ukraine war and the refuges and so much more. creativity is a  self-therapy technique which does not require words