Social Prescribing

We are proud to be part of the social prescribing movement, collaborating with local communities, GP’s surgeries and link workers to offer a range of creative activities for all ages. These range from movement, singing and storytelling to grief coaching, mindfulness and creative writing.

It is estimated that stress, anxiety, loneliness and social isolation account for 60-80% of GP visits in the UK as is 50% of all disease. Taking part in art, music, exercise, creative and social activities has been proven to have a vital and measurable effect on mental, physical and emotional health. By giving people the time and space to share their experiences in a group while encouraging their creativity, their confidence and self-worth is boosted as well as their sense of connection and belonging. This can lead to a more proactive approach to their own health and the adoption of healthy behaviours. Social Prescribing now plays a significant role in helping to ease the pressure on the NHS.

Compassion and kindness are the cornerstones of all our work, as well as the shared vision that creativity, connection and community are an essential part of the solution.

Below is a list of our current Social Prescribing practitioners.

While all of the below activites have therapeutic effects, our practitioners are not therapists.

Lee Carter : Movement, storytelling, griefwork. Physical movement has been shown to help us process grief, especially when combined with storytelling and the chance to channel our most difficult experiences into creative projects. Grief can also make us feel very isolated so being part of a group can play an important part in the healing process.

Hattie Edmonds: Creative Writing and accessing intuition through the heart. All creativity is an intuitive act involving our hearts as well as our heads. Research from the HeartMath Institute shows that a closer connection to our hearts, achieved through simple meditative and creative practises such as writing and journalling, makes us happier, healthier, kinder to ourselves and others and more able to balance our emotions.

Micky Pallant : Singing with our One Day choir, ukulele music sessions, tea dances for the over 50’s. Research by Oxford University shows that increasing our happiness levels is a direct and measurable effect of joining a choir. It also reduces stress levels and anxiety, as do music and dancing, while fostering that much needed sense of belonging.

Maryline Favreliere : Grief Coach. Almost 50% of the UK population experience loneliness and coping with grief on your own can be especially hard. We tend to think we need to be stronger or that we don’t want to burden anyone, but the result is a feeling of isolation. With her deep compassion and ability to listen, always without judgement, Maryline offers the chance to share what we all to often keep to ourselves.

Raquel Aguado: Pilates and Connection through Playfulness sessions. People with higher levels of playfulness are better equipped to cope with life’s challenges, according to Frontiers in Psychology. They also experience deeper levels of mental engagement and joy.

 
Featured
Micky Pallant
Micky Pallant

Micky Pallant is a musician and actor and has run the Portobello Live! Community Arts festival and the Portobello Live! Choir for several years. He works as an activities coordinator at local care homes, working with residents who suffer mainly from dementia and a wide range of disabilities. He teaches guitar and ukulele, running groups for both adults and children.

Micky is offering individual and group guitar and ukulele lessons as well as the chance to sing in our One Day community choir. He will also be organising tea dances for the over 50’s.

Read More →
Lee Carter
Lee Carter

Lee is a yoga teacher and physical theatre performer. Since training as a Sivenanda yoga teacher in 2005, she has been teaching private clients, companies and institutions including the BBC, The London School of Economics and Wandsworth Prison. As a physical theatre performer she has performed with Ockham’s Razor and Tilted. Lee also works alongside the charities Aching Arms and Sands, creating physical theatre and storytelling workshops that give voice to those who have experienced miscarriages or stillbirths.

Lee is offering movement and storytelling sessions as part of her ‘Every Body tells a Story’ practice.

Read More →
Hattie Edmonds
Hattie Edmonds

After a ten year career as a music journalist for a German pop magazine, Hattie became the first in-house writer at Comic Relief, working in a team on comedy projects with Richard Curtis, as well as transcribing the stories of project users including Rwandan widows, women experiencing domestic violence and people living with dementia. Her two novels were both published by RedDoor. Cinema Lumiere topped the Amazon fiction charts and her second novel The Spectacular Vision of Oskar Dunkelblick was described as “a beautifully crafted tale about a young man’s spiritual transformation.”

Hattie is offering sessions on: ‘Writing for Wellbeing’ and ‘Accessing your Intuition through Creative Writing.’

Read More →