Craftivists Garden #wellMAKING project

The #wellMAKING Craftivists Garden UK project, launched July 2014 (ending January 2015), is a an exciting partnership with  Falmouth University, Voluntary Arts and Arts for Health Cornwall & Isles of Scilly, and is a Connected Communities project supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. If you are based in the UK we need your help, craft skills & thoughts for this new project that will show how craft activities can help improve wellbeing by involving participants like me and you in the fun, connected, sensory and mindful process of making things. Join us in some hand-embroidery, knitting or crocheting of flowers while reflecting on the importance of wellbeing and what we need in order to flourish as individuals and as a society.

Each flower to represent you as a flourishing flower in our garden (which itself represents society, obvs!) and the time you have taken to deeply think about wellbeing for you and others. We’ve also created an app to collect your private answers to our questions for us to then present to the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Arts & Health in January 2015, to provide evidence of the power craft has to improve our society. And we’d love you to join our #wellMAKING Garden Party in January when it is confirmed.

All you need to get involved can be found here &  at www.craftivist-collective.com/wellMAKING :

• Summary YouTube video
• Instructions sheet
• Facilitators notes (if you want to set up a group stitch-in event)
• Stitch-In craft event poster template 
• Craftivist Garden badge we would love you to put on your website linked to www.crafitvist-collective.com/wellmaking
• Local press release template & tips
• We have hi res images in a Flickr album here for more inspiration for your flower & if you want to download & use to blog and share this project with others  (please accredit to “Craftivist Collective/ Tom Price”)
• You can buy our #welllMAKING kit on Etsy here if it would make life easier. At just £4 to cover costs it doesn’t break the bank.
• And don’t forget to download our Craftivists App as part of this project on Android and iPhone by searching ‘craftivists’:

To find out what each of our partners has to say about the project & updates on our progress do keep checking www.craftivist-collective.com/wellMAKING.

So let’s craft, connect, reflect, challenge so we can grow as individuals in society.  Come join  this unique project to  think beyond craft as a relaxing tool into a tool to help us strive and flourish in our lives in different ways and change the world one stitch at a time…. x