News article
Holy Biscuit Exhibition
6 August 2010 | Topics: none
Crisis members filled the Holy Biscuit Gallery in Newcastle with art, sculpture and spoken word.
The exhibition of works and performances from Crisis Newcastle members highlighted how creative activities can help to improve mental health and wellbeing. Crisis has undertaken some research looking at the impact of such activities at our London and Newcastle Skylight centres and during this event, the researchers spoke about their findings so far.
Special guest speakers from the arts industry at the event, included Godfrey Worsdale; Director of the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Arts, who talked about the importance of the arts within a community and commented on his own visits to centre: "As soon as you walk through the door you realise that you're somewhere special"
There was also a presentation from Robert Laycock; Chief Executive of Helix Arts, a charity which works with independent artists to create opportunities for people to participate in high quality arts activities. Crisis Newcastle have been working on a number of projects with Helix including "The Hidden City": a creative writing class which encourages members into creative expression and progression. Robert's presentation was followed by a performance of poetry from members of the group.
We then had a performance from Turning on a Sixpence drama group introduced by Alan Lyddiard, the drama project leader. The drama group had been working on a project which looks at the art of photography, film making and story telling and hope to capture 100 stories and photographs to result in an installation at Crisis Newcastle.
Finally, visitors were able to view an exhibition of works from the participants of the art qualifications held in the centre, creative sketch books, drawing and painting, sampling, with works also from the creative workshops in digital photography, Crafternoon and sculpture.
The Lord Mayor of Newcastle Brenda Hindmarsh who attended the event commented on the quality of the works on display and is planning to follow up with a visit to the centre to see where these works are made.
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