Adventures into the Digital Sandpit
Hello. My name is Anna, and I am the Catalyst project lead for my charity London Arts and Health Forum, working in the Definition round Spring 2021.
London Arts in Health Forum is a membership organisation which aims to develop the role of culture in wellbeing and to promote and support arts in health activity across London and nationally.
The organisation is free to join and offers events, a regular newsletter, training sessions, advice and support for artists, architects, clinical staff and service users — basically anyone with an interest in arts in health. LAHF currently has nearly 5,000 members from London and further afield. We also run Creativity and Wellbeing week, this year it runs from the 17th-23rd May and the theme is Care.
We have been on a real rollercoaster of digital learning over the past few months. Last Autumn, we completed the Discovery phase working with Third Sector Lab where we explored, tested and prototyped two key ideas. The first (and most popular) prototype was the Digital Sandpit. Bourne out of user research that showed our members were really struggling to deliver creative and therapeutic work in the Covid-19 pandemic, the Digital Sandpit aims to allow members to play, practice and polish their work in an online setting.
Our second prototype was called the Digital Directory. This idea we decided was actually quite feasible to make ourselves, we are pleased to say that earlier this year we launched the LAHF pARTner Up! website, aimed at connecting creative freelancers and organisations together particularly in light of the new Thriving Communities fund. This was completely inspired by the Catalyst process, and in particular Ross and Jess helping us realise what was possible using thesimple tools and platforms that we already have access to.
So from this:
To this!
We are excited to engage in this next round of CAST Definition funding. We want to bring our Digital Sandpit to life, providing better services for our members in the Pandemic, helping people access and benefit from the arts, culture and creativity during this time.
