artists in mind

• To support artists with acute and enduring mental health problems in the community and within psychiatric institutions, promoting the value of the creative process towards self-realization in the mentally ill individual.
• To highlight the significance of the sharing of psychological insights and experiences through art; the benefit to the artist-patient in terms of identity and self-esteem, to the contemporary artist in terms of professional development, and to the wider community in gaining a deeper understanding of psychic processes.
• To counter prejudice by challenging negative social perceptions of the mentally ill.
• To offer opportunities in the form of creative and professional development for mental health sufferers both within and beyond the institution.
• To support staff within psychiatric institutions in their own work as arts facilitators, developing active partnerships between arts organisations, psychiatric institutions and similar initiatives both nationally and internationally.
• To initiate and engage in debate within the area of art and healing from the premise of the Artist, to publish within the field, and to offer the work of AIM as a premise for the research of such issues for both clinical and cultural use.

 AIM was founded by John Holt, an artist and writer and former Fellow in Art and Design at Loughborough University.

Click here for "Anthropologists of the Mind" -- an article by John Holt.