https://vimeo.com/showcase/7050356
Nominator Guiliana Molinari, Deputy Director, Core Arts says: ‘During Covid-19, a committed team of staff and volunteers at Core Landscapes adapted fast to keep member students, volunteers and the wider community learning and engaging with horticulture and the environment to benefit mental health and wellbeing, increasing life skills and enabling personal development. For the 1000+ Core Arts mental health-based referral members, staff and volunteers have quickly learnt new filming, editing and presenting skills to create:
- 30+ varied “how to” gardening films + garden tours accessible online
- Gardening Q and A WhatsApp groups for members and volunteers
- Targeted promotion of films to organisations working with vulnerable community members with experience of mental ill health and people living on their own and socially isolated
- 850+ online viewers via Vimeo Facebook and Instagram
- Socially distanced volunteer watering + maintenance rota created for our 2 community gardens upkeep.
Additionally team members have grown on and delivered plant packages for our more vulnerable students to carry on gardening at home, enabling, empowering, inspiring each other through Whats App Q&As, sharing love and interest in plants, creating garden spaces with regular texts and calls. Zoom gardening sessions in partnership with other community organisations have increased breadth of engagement and shared resources and experience. It has brought people together in new ways, encouraging new online skills, engaging with wider social networks, empowered to learn at home and share growing experiences in new ways, supporting each other to develop personally and increase coping mechanisms for mental recovery and ongoing self-care.
