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Award Winning Hearth Looks Forward to 2010
The Hearth Centre will be 7 years old in January
2010!
Our first commission from the National Institute for
Mental Health in England was to write two plays to
put the case for early intervention in severe mental
illness for target audiences of health professionals
and carers.
Polly Wright, Artistic Director of the
Hearth Centre, researched and wrote the
scripts and employed a professional production team
to put the plays on.
Revolving Door and
When Time
Collapses were born in a draughty church
hall in 2003, and are still in constant demand.
Since that chilly launch 7 years ago, the Hearth
Centre has gained a national reputation for the
production of consistently high quality dramas on
themes of mental health and equality and diversity.
We were short listed for a national media award in
2007 for our tour of
Revolving Door
about young male suicide in Northern Ireland.
In 2009 we received an Arts in Health Award from the
Royal Society for Public Health for contributions to
the field of Arts in Mental Health Practice.
In 2009 the Hearth Centre received a contract from
the Recovery and Well Being department of the
Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health Foundation
Trust which enabled us to branch out into new ways
of promoting change through the arts. Artistic
director Polly Wright and Mandy Ross have pioneered
a new
Reading for Well Being
model which
combines creative writing and the discussion of
books and poetry to promote well being amongst
mental health service users. We were commissioned to
deliver the project in acute mental health contexts
and to train a cohort of 20 NHS staff in our
methods.
The first stage of our Reading for Well Being
contract has evaluated so well amongst patients and
staff that the BSMHFT have renewed it so it extends
well into 2010. We hope to tender in other areas to
eventually extend the Reading for Well Being model
all over the country.
In 2010 the Hearth Centre is branching out again-
this time into being a provider of role players for
training in clinical communication skills. The
Hearth Centre draws on a pool of excellent actors
with educational backgrounds who are very
experienced in role playing in clinical contexts and
in medical education. The Hearth Centre welcomes
Eve
Jones as our Role Player training
co-ordinator, who will develop role playing
programmes which are tailor made to the clients’
needs.
In December 2009 the Hearth Centre was officially
incorporated as a Not for Profit company. The first
task for our newly appointed board in January 2010
will be to throw a dazzling birthday party to
celebrate seven years of achievement of promoting
Change Through the Arts!
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