Wellbeing Get Together – Bloomin’ Arts

For our latest Wellbeing Get Together, a group of Coalition and IMHN members, lead by tutors from Bloomin’ Arts, explored our creative side with a fireworks themed art session.

Bloomin’ Arts are a charity offering creative arts courses to learning disabled, physically disabled and neurodiverse adults. It’s a fun, friendly and relaxed place where you can explore and develop your skills and love of the theatre, dance and visual arts. 

Our group met at their Lingfield centre and, over a cuppa, learned a little about the background of Bloomin’ Arts as well as the plan for the morning. We had four different stations to choose from, each offering a different creative experience and we could move around between them building on each other’s work or starting anew.

Firstly, there was a roll of calligraphy practise paper. This amazing stuff looked like normal paper but when you put water on it looks like ink, which then disappears as the paper dries! We used brushes and water to create sweeping rockets and splashed and flicked the wet brushes to create a different effect like an exploding firework.

The other stations had large circles of black card that created our dark sky backgrounds. The second station had a set of different sized neon patterned card circles that we arranged on the background to represent the blurred bright lights of a firework in the sky. The neon patterns also gave an interesting texture to feel for our visually impaired members. The third station had lots different metallic and brightly coloured materials with a variety of textures. Foils, pompoms, card and streamers created interesting patterns. Finally, at the last station we drew directly onto the background with oil pastels, experimenting with layering the colours and creating different textures with the pastels.

We had a lot of fun exploring the different art forms whilst chatting with friends – and we all felt our mental health had benefitted. In true Coalition fashion we made sure to have a cuppa and a slice of cake during the break!

Our Wellbeing Get Togethers are funded by The National Lottery Community Fund.