In May 2022, a team of artscapers were invited by the new National Centre for Creative Health to open an All Party Parliamentary Group discussion on young people, co-production, creativity and mental health services. Three children who had been part of co-designing training resources for community artscapers joined Ruth Sapsed (Director of CCI) and Paula Ayliffe (Co-Headteacher, Mayfield Primary School), to share their thoughts on having time to make art outdoors. The children advocated passionately about the learning and wellbeing benefits of being creative outdoors. They also discussed how important the open-endedness of artscaping was to finding their own creativity.
Over 100 people attended the virtual session, which was chaired by Rachel Hopkins, MP for Luton South. Many of those who tuned in commented on how articulate the children were in discussing the benefits of this work and the impact it has had on their wellbeing.
This was the second time artscapers had visited Westminster having been invited by the All Party Parliamentary Group on Art, Craft and Design in Education to contribute to a meeting in 2019.
You can listen to the full recording of the meeting here.