About ArtWays
Alena Kennedy and Friederike Krishnabhakdi-Vasilakis founded ArtWays in 2023.
Growing evidence and literature describes the preventive and sometimes restorative benefits of arts engagement in relation to mental, physical and social health. This includes engagement with creative arts such as music, singing, theatre, dance, festival, reading, as well as writing and visual arts, which ArtWays specialises in. Arts engagement is prescribed now as a Creative Intervention for mental health.
ArtWays has two streams: ‘ArtWays to Creative Skills’ where we teach practical skills in art making; and ‘ArtWays to Wholeness’ which accesses intuition and creativity and nurtures self-awareness and authenticity.
Our ‘ArtWays to Wholeness’ program encourages qualities of kindness, self-acceptance, joy, gratitude, caring, creativity and harmonious team participation with a variety of exercises which aid relaxation and integration of intuition and thought, the potential outcomes being creative thinking and action, lower stress levels, personal growth, improved relationships and enhanced wellbeing. These goals are similar to those used in Positive Psychology.
Many of our workshop participants don’t see themselves as creative or artistically inclined. Our exercises are non-threatening and open-ended so that those without previous experience may enjoy the simple sense of discovery created by mark and pattern making, while experienced artists can continue to express more of their ideas and create designs with greater complexity.
To unlock participants’ creativity, the entry methods used here are quiet time and breathing and relaxation exercises; free line-drawing (doodling); mark-making and pattern-creation. We provide basic exercises to help participants to recognise the elements of line and shape, expanding from there to more advanced exercises.
When participants realise what they are producing they often feel wonder, joy and a sense of achievement. The ideas and skills they learn in the workshops can be taken home to practice on their own or with others, and are also great to release stress.
You can join the ArtWays Facebook group: ArtWays_22 or follow us on Instagram: artways_22
Email ArtWays: artways22@gmail.com
