Arts For The Blues

Our most recent article discusses a feasibility study undertaken with patients and staff in an IAPT (Improving Access to Psychological Therapies) service. This article is open access and you can find it here: Karkou, V., Omylinska-Thurston, J., Parsons, A.S., Lewis, J., Dubrow-Marshall, L.,  Thurston, S. (2022). Bringing creative psychotherapies to primary NHS Mental Health Services in the UK: A feasibility study on patient and staff experiences of arts for the blues workshops delivered at Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) services https://doi.org/10.1002/capr.12544 

As part of the scaling up project funded by UKRI AHRC, we are offering Arts for the Blues training at Edge Hill University and University of Salford. This training is nearly full but do watch out for more training in the future.  To keep in touch and to find out about future trainings, email artswell@edgehill.ac.uk 

  A pioneering project led by Edge Hill University and developed in collaboration with the University of Salford, which uses the arts to tackle depression, has been awarded new funding to scale up across the North West of England.  Arts for the Blues is a collaborative research project between artists, therapists, universities, NHS trusts and cultural institutions. It has been developed to address a vital need in the North West, which has high levels of mental health problems, exacerbated by…

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The Arts for the Blues project has recently published an article ‘Arts for the Blues: The development of a new evidence-based creative group psychotherapy for depression’ which has been selected for inclusion in a new special virtual issue of Counselling and Psychotherapy Research to coincide with the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) consultation on the guidelines for treating and managing depression in adults. The virtual issue is free access until the end of February 2022 and the Arts…

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A film about the Arts for the Blues project was included as part of the Healing Arts Symposium hosted by the World Health Organization (WHO) and Metropolitan Museum of Art (MET) in New York. It was the only example from the UK and it was screened on 14th November 2021. The event was in partnership with Culturunners, the NYU Creative Arts Therapies Consortium, International Research Alliance, Johns Hopkins University, and the Open Mind Project.   The film can be also viewed…

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