Healing Arts Scotland: Renfrewshire Showcase
Event Description
Creative Renfrewshire hosts a one-day CPD event for artists, health, social-care, and community professionals to share practice.
Creative Renfrewshire hosts a one-day CPD event bringing together artists, health, social-care, and community professionals to explore how creative practice enhances mental health and wellbeing.
Featuring keynote provocations, workshops, networking, sharing practical models and lived experience. The event demonstrates arts’ role in reducing isolation, fostering cross-sector collaboration, and working creatively to support healthier communities.
If you are an arts worker, artist, carer or community professional this is for you!
Friday 19th June
The Wynd Centre, Paisley
10am – 2pm
The day will look like this:
10:00 Welcome
10:15 Intros & icebreakers
10:30 Provocation & discussion
11:30 Creative Workshops
13:00 Lunch & networking
14:00 Close
Breakdown of the day:
Provocations
10:30 – 11:30
How do we evaluate the success of arts-based wellbeing initiatives without reducing a profoundly personal, emotional experience into cold, quantitative data?
Discussion points
1. Does framing art purely as a “medicine” or a therapeutic outcome strip it of its intrinsic joy?
2. Art is often a luxury, yet it is profoundly vital for marginalized or isolated groups. How can communities dismantle traditional gallery and theatre barriers to ensure “Creative Health” is genuinely available to everyone?
Workshops
11:30 – 12:15
Sewing2gether All Nations is an award-winning, grassroots community charity based in Paisley, Scotland, that supports refugees and asylum seekers. The organization uses textile upcycling, sewing workshops, and community events to help “New Scots” practice English, learn life skills, combat isolation, and build friendships.
or
Saira Acosta Diaz is an artist, printmaker, and wellness tutor who facilitates art, creativity, and therapeutic wellbeing workshops. Saira’s current project is helping menopausal women through process art.
12:15 – 13:15
Singing for wellbeing :Daniela Hathaway runs highly popular Singing for Wellbeing and health workshops across Renfrewshire and the wider West of Scotland. Her inclusive, feel-good sessions are designed to boost mood, build social connections, and even support respiratory and cognitive health.
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Karen Herbison is a creative facilitator, playwright, actor, director, and children’s author with a 25-year background in social care with the arts, she delivers community-focused performance projects, creative writing workshops, and theatrical productions. We’re going to dip our toes into ‘creative writing’ (yes, I know that can fill folk with “Aw, naw! Ah cannae write!” dread) but gently, with no pressure … we’ll see how, by using simple words we can to tap into creativity, support anyone to create a written piece, to even be part of a sharing performance and to nudge open the doors out on a path to even deep-rooted dreams.
