Bentham healthy living project is Looking Well (From The Westmorland Gazette)

Pioneer Projects forges links between the arts and health

12:20pm Saturday 16th July 2011 in High and Low Bentham news

A charity has been helping to forge links between people working in the arts and health movement.

Visitors from across the globe, including Australia, South Africa and Mexico, converged on High Bentham-based Pioneer Projects (Celebratory Arts) – the charity which runs the Looking Well scheme.

Looking Well had been chosen to host two days of fringe events as part of the Critical Mass Gathering, a northern tour of people involved in the arts and health world, beginning in Durham and ending in Man-chester.

The events were set up to raise awareness and explore the nature of community-based arts and health projects.

Alison Clough, creative director of Pioneer Projects, said: “This is an exciting opportunity for artists working or wanting to work in community health to meet other artists and researchers and to create opportunities for networking and exchange with their counterparts around the world.”

Visitors arriving in Bentham were involved in a number of workshops, including setting up a “travelling suitcase” in which small hand-made books were produced containing conversations later to be taken up in other parts of the world.

They saw how the organisation used its own garden to produce home-made produce and shared in poetry, prose and song.

Among the work was an installation which is to be put on display in Bentham town centre, and a sculpture of a horse made out of branches.

Pioneer Projects is an arts and health charity which uses creative activity to improve individual and community health and looks at tackling social exclusion and reducing heath inequalities.

Looking Well, which is based in King Street, Bentham, also held an open week, in which people were invited to see what the organisation offered.

It holds group activities throughout the week, runs a café on a Wednesday and holds a community lunch on a Tuesday.

See the Pictures Special in this week's Craven Herald.