Art Gallery Calls On Help From Mental Health Community To Create Mindful Exhibition

An art gallery has created an exhibition devoted to mindfulness, with the help of mental health service users in Manchester

Manchester Art Gallery has launched And Breathe which aims to explore the relationship between art and mindfulness. The gallery has teamed up with Greater Manchester Mental Health Trust (GMMH), Start in Manchester and Manchester Mind.

The exhibition also had help from Charlestown Community Primary School.

Running until March 2019, it comes part of the gallery’s Mindful Museum project which has seen mindfulness introduced to its audio guides giving a range of timed mindful meditations, and also extended to colour of its walls.

The museum’s relationship with mindfulness began with a series of sessions in the gallery’s art stores.

It says this exhibition “mixes the historic with the contemporary”. It includes 19th century seascapes, to more abstract, surreal and modernist works and contemporary photographic pieces.

It doesn’t stop there, the gallery says even the comfort of the furniture has been tailored to enhance wellbeing.

Louise Thompson, Health and Wellbeing Manager at Manchester Art Gallery, hopes that the exhibition will “bring mindfulness to a larger audience” with more than 500,000 visitors expected to the gallery this year.

Cathy Fortune, Arts and Culture Partnerships Coordinator at GMMH, applauds the partnership as “involving service users from the beginning and in a big way.”

Find out more on the gallery and the exhibition here.