Improving health and wellbeing in Berwick through arts, culture and creativity

Engaging with arts and culture is proven to have lots of benefits – everything from combating loneliness to boosting life long learning. One of the most positive impacts is the ability for arts and culture to improve our overall health and wellbeing.

Because of this, we launched a brand new funding programme to help Berwick-based cultural and creative practitioners and organisations deliver activities that could improve the health and wellbeing for residents in the town. The first round of the Creatively Healthy Berwick Fund launched in 2025 and was designed to complement Northumberland County Council’s Creatively Healthy Berwick vision, which aims to deliver:

“A community where every resident can access appropriate, effective and person-centred creative opportunities that lead to sustainable improvements in their health and wellbeing”.

We had a fantastic response to the call out, and two brilliantly creative projects went on to secure grant funding.

Create a Space

Having received funding from our Creative Action Fund to deliver a pilot of the project, we were delighted to award Create a Space additional funding through the Creatively Healthy Berwick Fund to continue and expand its work to empower the creativity of neurodivergent young people in the town.

Create a Space runs creative sessions for neurodiverse 16-25 year olds who live in and around Berwick. Coproduced with the participants and developed in collaboration with creative practitioners and facilitators, the programme aims to create a sense of community and belonging, and provide opportunities for participants to develop their own creative practice and engage with the creative community in the town.

The grant from Creatively Healthy Berwick Fund allowed Create a Space to introduce new elements to the creative programme. They included a Discord server developed and managed by the project’s trainees which allows participants to access activities and document their creative experiences. It also provides a way for the young people to stay in touch and communicate with one another. The ambition is that the Discord server, and the expansion of Create a Space into a CIC, will allow young people to access and develop creative content 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

Another new element was a guest artists programme, which saw creatives – including many from Berwick itself – work in partnership with the young people to deliver creative sessions.

Matthew Walmsley delivered a casting workshop. Chloe Sayers, part of the original Create a Space team and now a guest artist, led a Zine workshop. And Jo Hart, a nature-based artist and forager, worked with participants to make temporary art with natural materials.

Create a Space partnered with another Creatively Healthy Berwick Fund recipient, Berwick Literary Festival on its The Present Page project (read more below). And the team is also planning a group visit to Edinburgh’s award-winning sculpture garden, Jupiter Artland.

This year’s expanded Create a Space programme also benefited from the work of two trainees who were previous participants and were funded through our Create Your Future fund; delivering opportunities for young people to access paid work experience in the creative and cultural sector.

Emily McElroy from Create a Space said: “As an education professional and parent-carer myself, I know how isolated neurodiverse young people can feel – especially in a town as small as Berwick.

“This project is about creating a community and a safe place where people can engage in arts and cultural activities and develop their own creative identity. We have a very high return rate for our sessions and it’s amazing to see young people making connections and learning from each other.

“I’m so pleased to see our participants and trainees developing and leading on creative activities. It’s a powerful experience in the room, and it’s an excellent way to build a community.”

The Present Page

The second recipient of our Creatively Healthy Berwick Fund was Berwick Literary Festival (BLF), who used the grant funding to deliver a six-part creative journaling programme designed to support mental wellbeing.

Titled, The Present Page, each of the six sessions explored a new creative practice, including topics like writing, drawing, and storytelling. Led by experienced artist-practitioners, the sessions encouraged participants to explore journaling as a daily wellbeing practice; something that can be calming and meditative, while also focussed and creative.

Research has shown that journalling and expressive writing can support mental and emotional wellbeing, helping people process emotions, manage stress and enhance clarity of thought and self-awareness.

Papermaker and book artist, Lucy Baxandall, led participants in exploring page structures and creative ways to collect thoughts, images and ideas using pockets and accordion folds. Everyone that attended was able to produce their own handmade journal. And composer and sonic artist, Martin Parker, encouraged The Present Page participants to explore the three modes of listening (casual, semantic, and reduced) and how listening can be an active and creative practice that enriches and supports our daily lives.

Other sessions included storytelling and personal narrative with writer Chris Adriaanse; drawing with mind and body, which was led by visual artist Kate Temple; writing into drawing with artist and writer Anna Chapman Parker; and writing and movement with interdisciplinary artist, Chloë Sayers.

Berwick-based artist and The Present Page Programme Lead, Anna Chapman Parker said: “The Present Page was an opportunity to explore what daily creative activity can look like across many forms – from scribbling in a notebook to thinking about the stories in our heads, the song lyrics drifting past the windscreen or the way we coax our bodies out the door.”

BLF Director Joan Montgomery added: “The workshops reflect the heart of the Literary Festival, celebrating the power of storytelling in everyday life, and making space for creative exploration in our community.”

Continuing to support health and wellbeing through arts and culture

Whilst Create a Space and The Present Page marked the final round of our Creatively Healthy Berwick Fund, we are exploring future opportunities to ensure the residents of Berwick can continue to experience the health and wellbeing benefits of engaging with arts, culture, and creativity.

Sign up to our newsletter or follow us on social media to find out about future opportunities for Berwick-based cultural and creative practitioners and organisations.