“Sakai City with Hospital Art” Conference

for Sakai City and Kansai University, Osaka, January 8th 2021

If this pandemic has taught us one thing, it must be that the wonders of Zoom know no bounds. One moment you’re sat enjoying your morning coffee in the comforts of your own home, and the next you are speaking at a university conference in Japan. Wild times!

Back in early January we were invited by professor at the Faculty of Societal Safety Sciences, Katsuyuki Kamei, to speak at the ‘Sakai City with Hospital Art’ Conference in Osaka.  

Professor Kamei himself attended our workshop ‘Permission to Play’, held at Gasworks in February 2020 (pictured) and invited us to share this experience with his students and colleagues. We also got a chance to talk about the history of Art4Minds and our future plans with the collective. As well as, speaking about grassroots mental health and collective care as opposed to psychiatric services, which is, of course, a case that is close to our hearts.

After our presentation we did a Q&A with the audience and we discussed how an Art4Minds workshop might go down in Japan. They really liked icebreakers but suggested they might be quite shy with some of the exercises, which we reflected made it even more important to create a safe space for people to play without feeling self-conscious. Lastly, we gave them a few examples of icebreaker we have used in the past.

A huge thank you to professor Katsuyuki Kamei, who hosted and translated at the same time and also made the beautiful slides you see in the pictures, and to all of the members of the audience for their really interesting questions. It was a joy speaking to you all!

When we are able to travel again we’d be honoured to go to Osaka and meet the students in real life, till then Zoom will have to do!