Hello, I’m Sue Jones, a Creativity and Wellbeing Arts Practitioner.
I am a kind and compassionate person who likes to express gratitude for all things in life. I practice Buddhism theory, and I am a spiritually-minded person and very passionate about how creativity impacts our wellbeing.
My practice tools unleash and thrive when I facilitate when others, where we can connect, relate and engage. In my art practice, I recognise that the benefits are transferable to positively supporting others’ wellbeing.
My Personal creative journey started on the Creative and Therapeutic Arts degree course in 2019, coming from a background of community work and working collaboratively and facilitating workshops and wellbeing groups.I have started to develop my artistic identity on my course, and visual art and storytelling (narrative) through my practices has become more to me as second nature.
I work with a wide range of materials that I practice, including mixed-media arts, clay, sewing, photography, storytelling, and recycled art and I’m always open to working with whatever materials that suit the needs of my workshop participants many others in my workshops. However, my core belief is that if I can work in a person-centred way in my workshops, I can bring out the best workshop facilitation techniques within my practices and, in turn, bring out the best in others.
I am a very focused, driven person about the outcomes of my creative interventions, interested in creative and wellbeing workshops and how we can measure the impact of creative wellbeing workshops and evaluate them for continuous learning and future practice. I am also keen to engage in collaborative working with organisations, community groups, charities, and education institutions to apply for funding projects to improve our connection with the arts and, consequently, our health. This is because I believe creativity can bring about a better quality of life and instigate a positive, ripple effect on the wellbeing of our wider community. If we can evidence to show this change for educating others or other facilitators and techniques for people to implement these in their future sessional works, and for the wider community and organisations and people as a whole, you would benefit from coming to the sessions or using arts as a tool for engagement for themselves for positive wellbeing.
I engage in many personal wellbeing practices, including mindfulness, being outdoors in nature, photography, journaling, landscape photography and heritage, and exploring themes of our place, identity, heritage, and personal development strategies. I also collect lost and forgotten objects that can be recycled to be and consequently given a new purpose in life. This also helps reduce how many objects contribute to recycling and helping the landfill. People who know me say I see a project let’s make it, or, “it’s a sue project beautifully”.
I have experience working in group settings that include all-inclusive art groups, all-female-identifying groups, inter-generational community groups, children parent/guardian and child workshops, and children in school settings with additional learning needs (ALN). If I can bring about positivity within my practices, I can be the best practitioner to myself to be the best practitioner with others in my sessions.