This week, 12 - 18 March 2018, is Museums & Wellbeing Week! Wellbeing through art is at the heart of everything we do at The Lightbox, and our community programme offers a range of creative activities tailored to the needs of children, adults, people with disabilities, health issues or are isolated due to social circumstance. We aim to provide an opportunity to participate in art in a safe space to improve health and wellbeing. 

So to shine a spotlight on all that our hard-working Learning team do, this week Heather, Nick and Emily take you behind the scenes for a week in the life of the Learning team:

Monday

On Mondays The Lightbox is closed to the public and gives us invaluable time to catch up on everything, from emails to ordering materials. Sometimes we use Mondays to do offsite workshops, like plaster casts at Woking College or visiting partners to plan future projects.

Our team is always on the go and running around the gallery and so we are lucky to be right by the canal, it’s one of our favourite places to go for a walk along on our lunch break to clear our heads and get some fresh air.

Tuesday

We regularly welcome school groups to The Lightbox for one of our activity session workshops. Our school programme explores our heritage collection with the history of Woking, or if it’s more art focused we will look around the gallery spaces and think about work on display from The Ingram Collection of Modern British Art to our latest main gallery exhibition.

Here’s some work by Year 1 from The Horsell Village School, inspired by Anthony Caro’s ‘Redoubt.’ These guys will be included in our annual schools exhibition ‘Centrepiece,’ make sure to come check it out when it opens 18 July 2018!

Wednesday

Twice a month on Wednesday mornings, we run ‘Art in Mind’ which is a session for people living with the early stages of dementia. This is a really special programme, and doesn’t just benefit the wellbeing of the participant, but it also benefits their carer or family member who comes with them. In the sessions we focus on an art work from The Ingram Collection, and make work in response to the piece.

Take a look at Joy’s gorgeous response to ‘Orange Tree and Cactus’ by Glyn Philpot (see the inspiration here).

Thursday

As well as school visits, on Thursdays we run our Young Curators programme for 13-19 year olds. For each project we work with different artists or arts professionals to create work or put together an exhibition. Currently we are working with printmaker Richenda Court to create work in response to Picasso. Their work will go on display at The Lightbox to coincide with our latest exhibition Picasso: Paper and Clay.

Friday

Painting with under 5’s once a month is the best way to get us in the mood for the weekend! The session is pretty much organised chaos and is great fun. The session begins with a huge sheet of white paper on the floor, 45 minutes and a whole lot of paint later we’re left with a work of art.

Before...

...after!

Saturdays and Sundays

If we’re not supervising an Adult Saturday workshop, our favourite ways to spend are weekend are going for nice walks, checking out other galleries and museums, seeing friends and eating delicious food! We think it’s so important to spend time in museums and galleries and get outdoors, these can really help your mood and increase your own wellbeing.

Find out more about everything our Learning team does