Beyond Therapy: When Creativity Becomes Mental Health Care
Hosts: Ember Mental Health, The SHM Foundation, Um Pouco d’Arte, Center for Arts-based Methodologies & Wellbeing (CFAW)
Community-led organisations around the world are using illustration, music, and visual storytelling as part of mental health support, especially in places where traditional services are limited, stigmatised, or don’t reflect local realities. When care feels too clinical or out of reach, creative approaches can offer another way in: a safer, more accessible language for expressing emotion, rebuilding connection, and restoring a sense of agency.
In this participatory session, you’ll experience how arts-based practice can work as a practical pathway into care, with examples and collaborators spanning Pakistan, Mozambique, and the UK.
Through short provocations, visual examples, and guided activities, we’ll explore how simple, culturally grounded creative tools can reduce stigma, centre lived experience, and build trust — supporting both individual wellbeing and collective change.
Together, we’ll reimagine mental health care beyond clinical settings, treating creativity not as an add-on, but as part of the care infrastructure.
Co-facilitated by Ember Mental Health and The SHM Foundation, in collaboration with Ember Partner Innovators Center for Arts-based Methodologies & Wellbeing (CFAW), Pakistan, and Um Pouco d’Arte, Mozambique.
Attendees will gain concrete global examples, practical models, and fresh ways to think about mental health care: grounded in creativity, community leadership, and real-world partnership.
Facilitators include: Rutaba Syed (CFAW) — Public artist leading CFAW, using arts-based, participatory methods like folklore and storytelling to support wellbeing, health promotion, education, and climate resilience.
Abeer Ahmed (CFAW) — Registered Art Therapist (AATCB) who designs and leads CFAW’s art-therapy workshops and curricula.
Denise Ivone (Um pouco d’Arte) — Mozambican illustrator and human rights advocate using culturally rooted storytelling and comics to support survivor-led healing and gender justice.
João Matos (Um pouco d’Arte) — Mozambican community development practitioner advancing participatory approaches that strengthen access, belonging, and collective wellbeing.
Further reading:
CFAW.
Um Pouco d’Arte’s comic book series, Wagaia.
This venue has a capacity of 90.