Older people with mental health needs have participated in a community arts project, InTent City, which reached fruition with an exhibition at Oxford’s South Park on Saturday 22 September.

InTent City is a unique visual arts project bringing together different cultural groups, primary schools and artists to transform tents into works of art. Tent themes include Freedom, Well Being, Inclusion, Friendship, Tribal and Refuge.

Artscape, an Arts project based within Oxfordshire & Buckinghamshire Mental Health Partnership NHS Trust, is one of the partners in the project and coordinated the contribution of service users, carers and staff to the Health and Well Being tent.

Artscape’s contribution has been the creation of 36 beautiful silk paintings for a wall hanging on the theme of LifeCycles. From February 2007, Wendy Markham led a tenweek project for Artscape working with service users, carers and staff from the Trust’s Older Adult Services in Oxford. People involved in the project have acquired a wide range of new creative skills and friends which has prompted Artscape to develop a regular dropin art group at Manzil Way.

Participants in the project enjoyed different aspects of the work – the atmosphere of the group in addition to the opportunity to learn a new skill and to be creative. Their feedback includes the following individual comments:
“It was a very friendly group, this was the main thing for me. As soon as I got together with everybody I felt quite at ease.”
“We all feel it is difficult to put it into words but as you get older you want to achieve something and not just sit there doing nothing.”
“It’s great to see the final piece of work publicly, so there will be recognition of what this group is about.”
Member of staff Beatrix Ruckli, Occupational Therapist Clinical Specialist, adds, “This group has been founded on a very sound basis and that’s the reason why it came together very nicely and why it is such a success. Creating a safe environment and being at ease links into the Wellbeing model; taking gradual steps towards a meaningful goal links into recovery; integrating oneself into the local community can be associated with social inclusion.“

Fusion, Oxford’s community arts agency, has been instrumental in bringing together the partners for the project and the InTent City exhibition features tents from a number of different community and arts groups. Further information can be viewed on the website: www.intentcity.

The Artscape Gallery at the Warneford Hospital will also be hosting an exhibition of images from the Health and Wellbeing contribution to the InTent City project from 22 September for one month