Tuesday 28 Feb 2012, 1.30 – 4.30pm, Oakengates Theatre, Telford

The personalisation agenda in Social Care means that service users are being given their own personal budgets, effectively becoming individual commissioners. It is predicted that by April 2013, over a million people will have a personal budget.

The opening up of service provision means that artists now have the opportunity to develop and offer services that creatively meet the needs of individuals. This event offers an introduction to personalisation and how to prepare for this growing micro market.

Contributors will include Tony Nottingham, independent consultant and support broker working in the area of personal budgets.  Read more... (117 words, estimated 28 secs reading time)

Monday 7^th November, 2011, Heartlands Hospital

This well attended event was put together in response to the growing use of volunteers in delivering a range of arts and health work, both directly delivering creative workshops and in planning, support etc. It was attended by a wide cross section of independent artists and staff from arts, health and social care organisations involved in delivering arts in health.

Presentations were as follows:

Advinder Gill, Volunteer Manager, Heart of England NHS Foundation Trust

Practical considerations on the recruitment and management of volunteers, including how to make the experience mutually useful.  Read more... (457 words, estimated 1:50 mins reading time)

Monday 14^th November, 2pm

Heartlands Hospital, Bordesley Green East, Birmingham

Praxis’ popular series of Insider Guide events continues with An Insider Guide to Working with Volunteers, in partnership with Heart of England NHS Foundation Trust.

Volunteers are becoming an increasingly important resource in a range of arts and health work. Presentations and case studies will explore some of the issues of working with volunteers including:  Read more... (169 words, 2 images, estimated 41 secs reading time)

• Recruiting volunteers
• Keeping volunteers motivated
• The different roles volunteers can play in your work
• Balancing the needs of volunteers and participants
• An overview of your responsibilities

Thursday 8^th September, 1.30pm

Solihull Arts Complex

Praxis’ popular series of Insider Guide events continues with An Insider Guide to Arts Work with Older People, in partnership with Solihull MBC. The event features input from experienced professions and opportunities for discussion, sharing experiences and networking.

Presentations and case studies exploring the issues of working with older people in a range of settings will include:  Read more... (165 words, estimated 40 secs reading time)

• Sandwell Third Age Arts – individual one to one programmes of creative arts in a range of visual and performing artforms
• ArtsinMind – a service for older people living with dementia or cognitive difficulties run by Wolverhampton Arts and Heritage

This new edition of the Mental Wellbeing Impact Assessment (MWIA) toolkit has been published by the National Mental Health Development Unit in partnership with the English National MWIA Collaborative. 

It is designed to help support national, regional and local services and systems across health, local government, the voluntary, community and private sector to embed mental wellbeing into their work.

This version builds on the earlier MWIA Toolkit published in 2007, and is a final working draft.  Click here for more information or download the Toolkit here.

See also the Mental Wellbeing Checklist which was mentioned in our Commissioning Revealed Event in November.

On 2^nd November, key arts and health stakeholders from across the region were invited to attend a round table discussion to consider how praXis should make sure that its arts and health work is of the highest possible quality.  You can read the notes from the event and see who attended here.     

Don’t forget to leave us your comments on what you have read:

Just how do we encourage artists to collect evidence of ‘soft outcomes’? 
How can we use enthusiastic GP Practice Managers as champions for arts and health? 
Does quality matter in arts and health? 
Does evidence really matter – is any evidence enough?   Read more... (144 words, estimated 35 secs reading time)

praXis endeavoured to make the commissioning process clearer for artists and arts organisations at Commissioning Revealed, held at the newly refurbished Walsall Manor Hospital recently. 

Our thanks go to all the speakers and delegates for a useful and interesting morning, which has left us all with food for thought.

You can’t miss reading what was said and seeing the presentations!  View the notes here, where you’ll also find links to lots of useful sites and contacts.

Let us know what you think about the information provided by our speakers – was it useful to you?  Have you any more questions for them you’d like us to pass on?  have you any tips from your own experiences?  Just leave a comment below…

The debate continued with key questions from the audience.  See the brief transcription of responses here or view the videos below.

Question 1: Is there a way of capturing the implicit value of arts and health work that will please all stakeholders ie. commissioners, commissioned and participants?

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Question 2: Is there room for failure? Is failure being documented?

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Question 3: Please would the panel define (in their opinion) the difference(s) between Arts in Health and ArtsTherapies. Is there a continuing process from one to the other?

 Read more... (156 words, estimated 37 secs reading time)

The next few years will be challenging; changing priorities combined with funding cuts will mean we will need to be clearer about the role the arts plays in furthering health and well being.

Arts and Health: Visions of Reality brought together  some of the most experienced workers in the country together to share their visions of how arts and work will be developed during the next decade and to answer questions.

The live debate took place on Thursday 29th April 2010 at Staffordshire University.  Over 100 people attended and joined the panel in a thought-provoking discussion, which was chaired by Mark Webster.  The panel opened the debate with their visions for the future of Arts and Health:  Read more... (671 words, estimated 2:41 mins reading time)