arthur+martha have pioneered ways of working unique in arts and health.
We use experimental writing and art to help self-expression. We work with communities who are often marginalised, homeless people and older people, including those living with dementia. To have a voice and be heard is a powerful human need. By helping to achieve this we boost people’s well-being and promote understanding in wider society.
2015-17 our project The Homeless Library launched at The Houses of Parliament and the Southbank. Stitching the Wars continued our sequence of embroidered history quilts, with exhibitions 2016-17 across Derbyshire, the project received a Foundation Derbyshire Award. We presented evidence to an Arts and Health All Party Round Table at The House of Lords in 2016 and helped launch the subsequent major report in 2017.
arthur+martha have art and poetry work in local and national collections:
Quilters’ Guild Collection 2 quilts from the project Stitching the Wars
North West Film Archive films from the projects The Homeless Library and Armour
North West Sound Archive poems and interviews from the projects The Homeless Library and Armour
Derbyshire Archives poems, interviews, sound recordings and book, from the project Stitching the Wars
Bury Art Museum artworks and poems from projects The Homeless Library and A Map of You.
The Booth Centre the quilts The Warm & the Cold and Sing me to Sleep
Plus artwork gifted to Age UK, Alzheimer’s Society and The Farming Life Centre, Buxton.
They were included in the 2017 All Party Parliamentary Group, Arts and Health inquiry report, public launch at Manchester Metropolitan University www.artshealthandwellbeing
