Creative Health and Wellbeing through Artmaking Short Course
Course description
Course overview
This short course introduces Creative Health as both a personal practice and a growing field within the arts and health movement. Practical work is combined with thoughtful discussion, offering both experiential learning and conceptual grounding.
The arts and the imagination are powerful contributors to human wellbeing. They help us build resilience, make meaning and strengthen connection to ourselves and others.
Through hands-on art making sessions alongside guided reflection and short seminars, participants explore how creative processes support emotional, physical and social wellbeing.
Participants may draw on personal experiences or stories in their creative work. Some course material is informed by therapeutic approaches but is focused on creative health rather than therapy, providing a reflective and supportive learning environment.
Learners will gain insights managing personal wellbeing and acquiring tools to apply this knowledge both for themselves and their communities.
Location: on campus and online. Please check the booking section for location details. Our online course welcomes students from around the world.
Who this course is for
This course welcomes both practicing artists and those without prior art training. Technical ability is not the focus. Curiosity, openness and willingness to engage in the process are what matter.
It is particularly relevant for:
- Individuals seeking to deepen their creative voice
- Artists interested in arts and health practice
- Practitioners working in community, education or health contexts
- Those curious about the relationship between imagination, storytelling and resilience
- No previous artistic experience is required.
Key information
Topics Covered
- Guided drawing, painting and mixed media
- Short seminars with key texts and resources
- Group dialogue and reflective feedback
- Self-reflection practices
- Introduction to a Creative Health network
- Distinctions between creative health practice and clinical art therapy
Learning Outcomes
By the end of the course participants will:
- Understand how arts practices contribute to health promotion and social wellbeing
- Experience creative processes as tools for resilience and meaning making
- Recognise how creative health practice differs from clinical therapy contexts
- Produce a body of artwork developed during the course
- Gain approaches transferable to work, family and community settings
- Receive a digital badge and certificate of attendance
Materials
On campus or Online
- Colour soft pastels and oil pastels
- Poster paints and assorted brushes
- A4 and A3 pads of cartridge paper
- A4 pastel paper
- Scissors
- Pencils and pens (assorted)
- Colour markers (assorted)
- Glue stick
- Masking tape
- String
- Magazines (to cut)
If you are taking this course online, please see our Guide to taking online short courses.
Tutor
R.M. Sánchez-Camus
R.M. Sánchez-Camus (Marcelo) is a creative practitioner whose research interests include audience interaction, embodied mythologies, mindfulness, legacy, and spatial imagination. Marcelo is the co-founder of Social Art Network and recently co-convened the Social Art Summit in Sheffield in developing the world's first Social Art Biennial. He has extensive experience in arts & health with a focus on arts as a therapeutic intervention in the dying process and can be heard on BBC Radio 4 Four Thought podcast. He holds a BA in Fine Art from School of Visual Arts, NYC an MA in Scenography from Central Saint Martins UAL and a PhD in Social Practice from Brunel University, London.Book a course
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