Category: News

As we reached the final week of the Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival 2025, Press Play brought our SMHAF season to a joyful and heartfelt close. Held from 7th-9th November at The Standard in Dumfries, this vibrant exhibition showcased the creativity, courage and imagination of participants from two of our core community-based creative wellbeing (social prescribing) programmes,…

At the start of November, we partnered with Third Sector Dumfries and Galloway to host a special edition of the Mental Health Forum at The Grain Store in Dumfries. As part of this year’s Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival, the event brought together people from across the region to explore how creativity can comfort, challenge…

A message from our Creative Health & Wellbeing Director, Lucy Bell. 💡 From 2023 onwards, OutPost Arts has been FLAT OOT building, delivering, coordinating and evaluating ‘DG Creative Wellbeing’ – a partnership project that was made possible because of the amazing people working across arts, culture, social care and health sectors in our fabulous wee region……

In partnership with NHS D&G, OutPost Arts recently launched ‘TWELVE’ – an evocative and deeply personal exhibition by artist Heather Bestel, which was presented as part of the Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival (SMHAF) 2025.  Created during the first year following Heather’s diagnosis of complex PTSD, TWELVE is a series of twelve mixed-media works, each…

This November, we’re proud to be part of the Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival (SMHAF) – a nationwide celebration exploring how art, film, music and performance can open up conversations about mental health. The 2025 theme, “Comfort and Disturb,” invites us to think about how creativity can both soothe and challenge, helping us process emotions,…

This World Mental Health Day, we’re shining a light on the role creativity can play in supporting wellbeing. NHS volunteer Frank Ritchie has brought his love of art and music together in The Art of Giving – an exhibition currently on display at Dumfries and Galloway Royal Infirmary. Through colourful, uplifting works inspired by song…

Back in May, we launched the newest Creative Toolbox project, with sixteen new young people joining us alongside five returning peer mentors.  The group arrived with budding curiosity, eager to meet each other and play. It was exciting to see a new wave of energy enter Creative Toolbox at our Welcome Session.   This year, we…

We’re excited to share the report from the Creative Health & Wellbeing Symposium, hosted by OutPost Arts in Dumfries back in February. The event marked the first of its kind in our region, bringing together arts, health, social care and community professionals to explore how creativity supports health and wellbeing. Spotlight on the Symposium The day…

Between April and June 2025, Midpark Hospital’s Atrium was transformed into a vibrant creative hub through a series of clay workshops led by local ceramic artist Ruth Elizabeth Jones. Over six fortnightly sessions, patients and staff came together to explore a new skill, ceramics, and in doing so discovered not just the joy of creativity…

By Creative Toolbox Lead, Georgia Blue Ireland Earlier this year, I wrote about the writing workshops that Creative Toolbox participated in during their time as graduates and in partnership with The Stove on their Creative Caerlaverock project. At the end of May, The Stove put together a finale event for this which showcased the work…