Time for Reflection
Packing away the artwork from our exhibition at Café Sobar with wide smiles on our faces, marked the end of our first formal project as a team. We reflected on how touched we were to see so many of you at our Self Care Social appreciating the atmosphere, which was positively buzzing with creativity and compassion. A heartfelt thanks to team Sobar for hosting, and their hard work on the night - you were amazing!
Hearing people discussing the importance of self care and what it means to them, watching people explore the creative resources and sit mindfully making, enjoying the brilliant performances from Ravelle-Sadé, Alice Duval and Matthew Fowler, we felt buoyed by this incredible creative community we manged to bring together. If you couldn’t be there, don’t worry, we will absolutely be back with more social events, workshops and projects for you to get involved with. Keep an eye on our social feeds or sign up to our mailing list to stay in touch.
This project has meant such a lot to us, and has succeeded in bonding three passionate individuals together in our pursuit to find our place in the world of creative self care. Having reached the end of our first project and taken some time to reflect, we are now in the process of figuring out the finer details of our next project. It turns out, we just can’t get enough! We have some really exciting things to come, and will share them with you as and when they happen!
What is next for Thortify?
We started out as a group of creatives determined to challenge the stigma surrounding mental ill health. Following the huge success of our first project, where we worked with an amazing array of artists to create three free workbooks and develop our website, we are now looking into adopting charitable or community interest status. This is because we aren’t here for profit, we are here for positive change through empowerment. This feels like the appropriate next step for us.
We’ll continue to update our website, blog and social media pages with creative content as well as partnering with other organisations to deliver events and more, though most of our work will be behind the scenes for a little while.
A summary of achievements
With thanks to Arts Council England, Thortify have delivered 10 public-facing creative workshops including:
3 crafting for wellbeing sessions with the Bee Creative Community
4 memories and crafting sessions with Beeston Women’s Group to produce artwork for National Heritage Lottery Funded project 'Fifty Years of Middle Street Resource Centre’
3 guided self care sessions based on activities included in our 3 workbooks.
Our funding has enabled us to produce 900 printed workbooks for public and professional distribution. Professional settings include occupational therapy, adult social care, community mental health, counselling, vocational, educational and university settings.
Over the course of the project, Thortify’s website received 36,000 unique visits and reached 64 countries outside of the UK. Following the launch of the first workbook 'Ground Yourself' on the 10th October 2022, the website was visited over 7,000 times in the first month. The publication of our 'Reflective Journal' in late December 2022 invited a further 11,000 visits in January 2023 alone.
How can you stay involved?
Sign up to mailing list
Join the Facebook group or tag us in your creative adventures
Share your creations with the Thortify community
Got an idea? Get in touch!
Facebook: Thortify
Instagram: Thortifyresilience
#selfcarescrapbook
#theartofselfcare
#thortify
And keep practising and sharing those self care strategies.
Lauren, Deb and Gloria
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