A place where everubody can experience creativity. Everyone is welcome, everyone can take part.
The Horsebridge Arts Centre is a creative community hub based in Whitstable, Kent. We provide inclusive access to cultural and creative experiences, enabling people of all ages and backgrounds to engage, connect, and grow through access to the arts. Through a year-round programme of exhibitions, workshops, performances, volunteering, and outreach projects, we address key local needs such as social isolation, poor mental health, and economic hardship. Working with over 80,000 visitors and beneficiaries annually we enable people who face barriers to access creativity and feel part of a thriving community.
At the heart of our work is the need to reach out and include those who are overlooked, a young person who doesn’t fit in at school, an isolated child with ASD or a lonely older person with rusty social skills. We want to help them understand and develop their creativity and bring it - and their concerns - to be part of work created by and speaking to our whole community, enabling them to see their creativity explored and enjoyed by others. We have a strong track record of being achieving this and continue to develop this expertise, with our ability to succeed driven by our welcoming environment and partnership-based model. Our work reduces loneliness, supports mental wellbeing, builds confidence, and encourages lifelong creativity.
The project will be coordinated and participants supported by Liz Atkin, an artist and educator. She reimagines her Compulsive Skin Picking and anxiety into drawings, photographs and performances. Liz is a mental health advocate and raises awareness for the disorder around the world. She has exhibited and taught in the UK, Europe, Australia, USA, Singapore and Japan. Her artwork and an archive of her advocacy for skin picking is held by the Wellcome Collection.
Liz teaches art in schools, hospitals, hospices, prisons, arts venues and universities. She is an ambassador for The Big Draw, focusing on the role of creativity for health and wellbeing. Her work has featured on TEDx, BBC News, Woman’s Hour, Vice, Women’s Health USA, Huffington Post, Channel News Asia, Metro, Al Jazeera and more
Debra Ivens will support the sessions and curation, and is an artist and qualified teacher and experienced workshop leader at the Horsebridge and other settings.
