art and creativity

Hope loves art and creativity

• • •   People don’t just work and sleep. We are three dimensional beings! Art and creativity can help people grow, gain confidence, and explore personal opportunities. These aren’t a minor part of life: they can be life-changing.
•   As part of all our work, Hope tries to use and promote art, craft and other creative activity to help people and their communities to improve their lives.
•   We use art and cultural activities to communicate and raise awareness about the issues we deal with.

We offer art related groups open to anyone excluded through homelessness, isolation, mental health, legal status, or addiction.

We offer a thriving range of creative groups using different media and means of self-expression, as well as groups who gather for self-help and who use art as part of their therapy. It gives voice and dignity to our service users.

Activities include formal art – painting and drawing – and street art:

Art and other graphic media can provide a way of coping with distress, with pain, and offers therapy. Some of Hope’s artist’s work can be considered part of the tradition known as Art Brut or Outsider Art, made by people who do not see themselves as artists (although they are) and whose art is a release and in some cases untrained self-expression.

Hope’s artists also sell their work and showcase what they do in art shows. Some of Hope’s artists, like Juris, pictured, are really exceptional, trained artists, who exhibit regularly.

Other art and craft based courses include poetry and drama (see our recent pantomime above), pottery and lots more.

We also promote creative writing and help people to express themselves through writing.

We run a creative writing group which has published its own collection of service users stories, ‘Writing in Hope’. Local legend Alan Moore has been a big supporter of this group.

We are also interested in the role of film to give voice to people on society’s margins. That’s why we have launched Hope Film Club, an occasional series discussing films and filmmaking and how they address issues of poverty and homelessness. We work with art based organisations, like Northampton Filmhouse, to host showings of films and debates related to the issues we deal with.

You can read posts from the club here

Issue 2  Documentary film

Issue 3  In da banlieue – French cinema and social housing

We showcase short and documentary films about our work and our interests on our you tube channel

You can find films about poverty and homelessness – check out these on MUBI

We welcome involvement in all of these activities by volunteers and creative people. Contact Hope to get involved