Mission
Through creativity Engage Here supports participation, nurtures wellbeing and embraces fun. Whether this is through facilitated workshops or remote art packs, we make art practice an accessible process that can help our communities thrive.
When Engage Here initially formed in 2020, our workshops were primarily delivered to older people living with dementia, and their carers. Today this is still a key part of our focus, but we now deliver workshops to a much broader range of ages, including children in hospitals to adults experiencing isolation. These groups all have the same shared characteristic; that they find regular streams of art participation challenging and are therefore missing out on the benefits that art practice can have on their personal wellbeing.
With these challenges being varied and sometimes complex, Engage Here finds bespoke solutions to deliver workshops free at the point of use, in community settings that make sense for people using them. The facilitators who deliver our workshops have experience working with lots of different kinds of vulnerable people, but importantly are practicing creatives themselves, who deliver workshops with the mentality that there is no expected outcome. They instead strive to foster an enjoyable and safe art practice, that is repeatable and inspiring for participants beyond their time with us.
Engage Here sees the potential of art practice as:
- An improvement to quality of life
- Expression of self-identity
- Cognitive stimulation
- Physical and dextral exercise
- Confidence to participate and less isolation
- Wellbeing, and in turn less demand on medical solutions
- Calmness and reduction in agitation
- New memories
- Relief for carers and families