A Celebration of Artscaping

Fullscope’s partner, Cambridge Curiosity and Imagination recently hosted a special event to celebrate facilitating more arts in nature opportunities for children and young people.

Held at Storey’s Field Centre, Cambridge Curiosity and Imagination (CCI) shone a light on everyone who has supported the charity to give more children and young people across the county opportunities to have precious arts in nature experiences. The event also championed the growing evidence base that this work can be generative for good mental health.

“There were hundreds of children's voices there - I can't think of any other exhibition I have ever been to that featured so many young stories”.

– Visitor

Through detailed pop-up displays created by the CCI artists, CCI shared artworks made in bespoke school projects. They were joined by project partners, including Fullscope - we shared our model for co-production - and scientist Dr Jen McGaley from Crop Science Centre, who has collaborated with CCI on mycelium inspired projects and colleagues from the new Rudd Centre at the University of Cambridge Faculty of Education.

David Aston of Wilburton C of E Primary School shared, “Artscaping has had a huge impact on the individual, on children who struggle to self-regulate. It gave those children time to talk, space to explore and be creative, with one-to-one time with adults. The transformation on individual children has been remarkable and something which, without the capacity building this project gave us, we wouldn’t have been able to achieve.”

Talks from our academic and school partners championed the importance of Artscaper practice. Headteachers highlighted the importance of Artscaping being used as a methodology to intervene early to support children’s wellbeing, so that children that often sit slightly below the threshold for external mental health interventions could be supported to prevent issues escalating.

Read more about the event in ‘This is the work’ - a celebration of Artscaping