Training & consultancy to support you and your organisation to thrive.

Since our inception in 2015 Arts & Health Hub has been recognised as an industry leader within creative health with a focus on artist support.

Through our training we have supported large scale organisations through to grass roots start ups and individuals to gain a better understanding of the creative health landscape, and to consider best practices when working in the sector.

We currently have 2 formal training programmes - Groundwork and Creative Health Foundations - that run periodically. Read on for more information.

If you are interested in a more bespoke approach, for example having a training session run specifically for your organisational team or a consortium of organisations, please get in touch to discuss possibilities and costs.

Groundwork Training:
Designing & Implementing Support for Creative Practitioners

Who is this for?

This training is for organisations commissioning and working with creative practitioners in the field of arts and health. This could include statutory and charitable organisations delivering community arts programmes (i.e social prescribing schemes) and arts organisations that commission artists. This training is not designed for individual artists.

How it Works.

Training groups are capped at a maximum of 20 participants to maximise involvement in discussions. Through a combination of knowledge sharing and facilitated group conversations this training will provide you with:

  • A greater understanding of supporting the needs of creative practitioners within the workplace, including working in a variety of venues with varying degrees of arts & health projects;

  • An action plan identifying achievable short and long term goals specific to your organisation or institution;

  • Peer-to-peer discussions exploring insights, challenges and solutions to supporting creative practitioners.

Groundwork builds on our experiences working on either side of the fence as both commissioned artists and working in commissioning roles in arts & health.

The training is comprised of three 2-hour online sessions covering the following:

Session 1.

  • Defining support — exploring the various support mechanisms that can be offered to create an environment where creative practitioners can flourish;

  • Exploring good and bad practice — identifying beneficial approaches and common challenges to providing sustainable support.

Session 2.

  • Means of offering support — exploring diverse ways in which support can be offered to creative practitioners with an individualised approach;

  • Developing a code of best practice for your organisation — considering formal and informal support, accessibility and flexibility, identifying existing and new resources.


Session 3.

  • Short and long term action planning — identifying individualised and achievable actions for your organisation

  • Developing a bespoke pledge to supporting creative practitioners — designing an ethos outlining your organisation’s sustainable commitment to how it supports creative practitioners.

This training was devised with consultancy support from Eve Loren.

Next Sessions.

There are currently no sessions scheduled for this training. We expect that there will be sessions running in late 2025. To find out when we release the next training dates, add your details below. We’ll only use your details to contact you about this training. If you’re interested in joining our general mailing list, click here.

Cost.

Larger Organisations
Annual turnover of over £30,000

Standard.
£149

Small Organisations
Annual turnover of under £30,000

Standard.
£99

Training:
Creative Health Foundations

This is a full day (10am - 5pm) and in person workshop aimed at supporting artists and arts workers to gain a foundational knowledge and understanding of the creative health sector. The day touches on 4 key sections throughout the day.

  1. Understanding the Creative Health Landscape.

  2. Creative Health Project Design.

  3. How to Approach Funding.

  4. Care (for Self & Others) in Creative Health Work.

Read on for more information about the specific content covered.

The day is a mixture of knowledge sharing from the facilitator and creative activities to help explore and digest information.

Who is this for?

The workshop is ideal for people (artists, producers, arts workers etc) wanting to gain a deeper understanding of creative health, get a sense of what to consider when designing their own project, how to approach writing funding applications, and how to ensure that care (for self and others) is embedded into working practices.

You might at the beginning stages of starting out in creative health, or have a bit of experience but want to brush up on your skills surrounding designing projects and looking for funding. The day is designed to be as accessible as possible with plenty of time to ask individual questions with generous sharing.

What the Day Covers.

Gaining a Foundational Understanding of what Creative Health is:

  • Understanding the spectrum of creative health work: different contexts & types of work.

  • Understanding social prescribing and connections between cultural and health sectors.

  • Recommended practical and interpersonal skills for creative health work.

Creative Health Project Design:

Exploring a number of considerations when designing projects:

  • With specific community groups or demographics.

  • In specific environments.

  • Disability, access and inclusion.

  • Whether activities and design of projects are culturally appropriate.

  • Complexity of lived experience (our own and/or others).

How to Approach Funding

  • Understanding the difference between certain types of grants that may benefit your practice;

  • Focusing on specific types of bids, including Arts Council England’s grants;

  • How to clearly and concisely describe your work and what this funding will help you to achieve;

  • Understanding how to budget, pay yourself and consider hidden costs;

  • Considering your own and other’s access costs;

  • Looking at strategic partnerships with organisations;

  • Understanding what public engagement is.

Care (for Self & Others) in Creative Health Work

  • A chance to reflect on how complex creative health work can be, and the impact it can have on our own wellbeing.

  • Identifying types of support that may be appropriate to support you in the work that you do.

  • Considering eco systems of care to ensure that everyone that works on creative health projects are taken care of.

Cost.

£75

Next Sessions.

Daniel Regan

Training Facilitator: Daniel Regan.

Daniel Regan is an artist and creative health consultant working across the sector, alongside being the founder of Arts & Health Hub. For over 20 years Daniel has worked across the creative health sector in a number of roles, including as a professional freelance artist, facilitator, consultant, mentor, and Director of an NHS arts charity in primary care. He has carved his own career path as someone working in varied roles within the field and being strategic about how to develop multiple and sustainable income streams.

Daniel’s wide-ranging experience includes:

  • Successfully fundraising almost £1m in funding for his own artistic practice and organisations that he has worked with and for. His funding successes come from numerous project grants and Developing Your Creative Practice grants from Arts Council England, the National Lottery Community Fund, numerous trusts and foundations, local councils and private sponsors. His grants have ranged from small artist bursaries through to substantially larger and long term project grants.

  • Providing consultancy on disability, access, inclusion, lived experience and ethical project design for organisations, funders and regulating bodies such as Baring Foundation, Royal College of Psychiatrists, British Association of Art Therapists and more.

  • Facilitating a large number of creative and socially engaged projects across a spectrum of environments and community groups, including with people with mental health difficulties, those experiencing homelessness and young people within community and clinical environments.

  • Contributing to discourse on how individuals and organisations can embed practices of care into their ways of working in order to ensure people are taken care of when delivering creative health work.

Feedback & Testimonials.

“The Arts & Health Hub team have years of experience listening carefully to the needs of creative practitioners. They understand practitioner support through having facilitated and evaluated it in many formats, from peer support groups to clinical supervision. They are well qualified to translate this experience for organisations committed to delivering safe and supportive arts and health programmes.” — Julia Puebla Fortier (doctoral researcher focusing on practitioner care)

“Daniel was a fantastic facilitator - great pace, collaborative style and friendly whilst also professional. A quickly established safe environment in which to share and discuss ideas. A clear structure across the days that culminated in personalised action points and take-aways.” — Anna Linch, National Portrait Gallery (April 2022)

“This is one of the best training programmes I've attended - I took away tons of helpful ideas and am already implementing them in our strategy and policies. ” — Clare Hankinson, Fabrica

Extremely helpful sessions which will have a real impact on how our organisation supports artists. The action-led approach was particularly helpful and encouraged full engagement and knowledge sharing between our organisations and experiences.” — Training Participant (April 2022)

“I am collaborating with four other organisations here in Cambridge in the arts and heath sector. We are wanting to explore ideas of ‘mutual support’ for the network of freelance creative practitioners we all work with and invited Arts & Health Hub to run a workshop for us all. In just three hours he helped us share ideas of what good practice looks like for everyone there and talk about the different mechanisms of support that are possible and his report from the session has gone on to stimulate future plans for this work in 2022. Working with an external facilitator in this way has allowed us to relax into the process and find time and space to be open and honest with each other.” — Ruth Sapsed, Cambridge Curiosity and Imagination

"Following some informal conversations with other local arts and health leaders around how we can work together to better support our teams (including our freelance artists), Arts & Health Hub seemed the obvious choice to help us progress our thinking! The Hub’s experience and enthusiasm was just what we needed to kick start an exploration of what 'support' can mean for different people at different times and how we could move our thinking into action. The workshop the Hub facilitated brought together five Cambridge-based arts and health organisations, involving charity leaders, programme managers and artists (many of whom work across several of the organisations). We are now developing a shared pledge on mutual support, which we view as fluid and evolving and are looking forward to continuing the collective conversations over the coming months and years." — Dr Emily Bradfield, Charity Director, Arts and Minds

“Inspiring facilitation, working as a collective, lots of valuable expertise shared by Arts & Health Hub.” — Training Participant

“The facilitation and provocations were very strong — it inspired some open and very interesting input from the group.” — Training Participant