national craft month 2023

1/3/2023

National Craft month is here! March 2023 has been designated as the month to celebrate the benefits of crafting! It's good for us in so many ways and lots of research highlights the benefits....

- Crafting helps us feel better!
- Being creative can help us manage mood and boost wellbeing!
- Creative projects boost confidence and help us connect with others!

Creativity has no age limits... we are all creative... and can become more creative as we age!

Here is some evidence on the benefits of arts and crafts...

Results from over 3000 studies identified a major role for the arts in the prevention of ill health, promotion of health, and management and treatment of illness across the lifespan. (Source: WHO Health Evidence Network Report).

This research also proves that arts and crafts provide a way of reducing loneliness and social isolation, particularly among people living in rural or disadvantaged areas.

In the World Health Organisation (WHO) Report, there is evidence of how the arts benefit health:

"Arts engagement can help to reduce the risk of developing mental illness such as depression in adolescence and in older age."
"Participating in arts activities can build self-esteem, self-acceptance, confidence and self-worth, which all help to protect against mental illness."
"...arts engagement can enhance... well-being, including affective well-being (positive emotions in our daily lives), evaluative well-being (our life satisfaction) and eudemonic well-being (our sense of meaning, control, autonomy and purpose in our lives)."
"Arts have been found to foster prosocial behaviour, a shared sense of success, physical coordination, shared attention, shared motivation and group identity."
"Arts have been shown to help build social cohesion and support conflict resolution through developing cognitive, emotional and social skills for constructive engagement with conflict, and by supporting empathy, trust, social engagement, collaboration and transformative learning, thereby producing more cooperative relationships."
"Among both adults and children, the arts have been found to aid emotional expression, improve coping and psychological adaptation to cancer, and enhance optimism and hope for survival."

Specific types of art are diverse and fluid. In relation to health research, engagement with the arts has been proposed as consisting of five broad categories (Source: WHO Health Evidence Network Report):

visual arts, design and craft (e.g. crafts, design, painting, photography, sculpture and textiles);
performing arts (e.g. activities in the genre of music, dance, theatre, singing and film);
literature (e.g. writing, reading and attending literary festivals);
culture (e.g. going to museums, galleries, art exhibitions, concerts, the theatre, community events, cultural festivals and fairs); and
online, digital and electronic arts (e.g. animations, film-making and computer graphics).

Lets Craft NI crafting programmes are aligned with the recommended 5 Steps to Positive Mental Health and activities boost confidence, enhance skills and learning, provide a sense of achievement, and encourage mindfulness and wellbeing.

Let's Craft NI specialise in group crafting workshops with community groups, women's groups, gardening groups, etc. We travel to your venue throughout Northern Ireland. Lets Craft NI offers a range of health and wellbeing programmes through the medium of crafting.

If your group or organisation could benefit from an arts and craft programme or workshop, please get in touch! We have creative programmes for all abilities and interests.

Enquire now