98 Educators providing Songwriting courses delivered Online

Sami Green Creative

sami green creative

Highbridge

Sami Green is a teacher, mentor, and workshop facilitator in Bristol and North Somerset. She completed a Fine Art BA at University Centre Somerset with Honours in 2021. Before this, Sami worked for 15 years creating, coordinating and building imaginative decorative environments for events. Wedding magazines and blogs across the world featured her styled photoshoots. Installation commissions include Plimsoll Productions, Tokyo World and Awesome Events. In May 2021, her degree artworks won a window display space and funding at Weston-Super-Shop Windows, a community project organised by Weston Arts Space. In 2022 her community-centred artwork Flutter II for St. John’s Church, Highbridge, won a new artist bursary from Somerset Art Works. Sami continues to develop The Transformation Project, curating responses through artist collaboration for SAW Festival in September 2022. Sami used her degree studies as an opportunity to develop ideas about perception and experience within critical spatial practice. A development from events experience. Her July 2021 exhibition, Emergentism, experimented with the sensory and intellectual processes that help us understand the world around us. Taking inspiration from nature, her unusual, abstract, material, and process-driven forms offered participants immersive, light and sound experiences through colour and frequency. In 2022, ideas led by research into art education practices and the benefits of art and culture to the wellbeing of a community have become central to development. Sami has worked with the community to develop a socially engaged artwork, exploring the collective potential and the possibilities in collaboration. She is working with cross-disciplinary performers and makers to promote a four-dimensional approach to experience through sculptural installation, sound, performance, and workshops. Exploring the multi-sensory in terms of perception and experience formed the backbone of recent experimentation. My research paper into the practices of Olafur Eliasson underpins these ideas,

Retune Charity

retune charity

Bishop's Stortford

Retune was founded by Tom Ryder. Tom is a musician and journalist, and has a diagnosis of bipolar disorder. He was hospitalised for poor mental health multiple times during his late teens and early twenties, which eventually forced him to withdraw from university and begin again from scratch. While in hospital, Tom noticed that patients were finding creative outlets to cope with their predicament. These outlets included drawing, painting, writing poetry, dancing, singing and cooking. Tom wrote songs and, despite those dark times, he realised creativity’s tremendous potential to improve mental health; it is crucial to have an outlet for feelings and emotions. A few years later, Tom started hosting live gigs. He also ran workshops in schools, connecting with young people who were experiencing mental struggles. In 2018, Retune started to take shape: in addition to live shows and schools, Tom now visited prisons and hospitals, and produced online content. Tom’s cousin Kathryn Bailey – a photographer, videographer and all-round creative – joined the project in 2019. As well as sharing Tom’s view that creative outlets are powerful tools for mental wellbeing, Kathryn had a personal attachment to Retune's mission... When Tom was first admitted to hospital, 11-year-old Kathryn was shielded from the truth, as she was considered ‘too young’ to know what was going on. Being involved with Retune allows her to be part of a cause that is close to her heart, especially as Retune’s workshops discuss mental wellbeing with all ages, from primary school pupils to adults. Open conversations around wellbeing are more commonplace nowadays, but there is still a long road ahead. Through its workshops and live shows, Retune is creating a community based around mental wellbeing, underpinned by creativity. When we retune something, such as a musical instrument or a radio, we make small adjustments in order to achieve harmony, clarity and balance. Retune believes that the same theory can be applied to mental health. Harnessing creative outlets that engage the imagination, and following the principles of the SCALES model, can help all of us to make small adjustments. As a result, our mental wellbeing will be more in tune.