Featured on BBC Springwatch, BBC Countryfile & Radio 4's Woman's Hour

Learn the neuroscience of the benefits of creative activity from a Cambridge-educated Sunday Times best selling author

Enrol on this workshop: £10

How creative activity improves mental health

This workshop is an hour-long video that will be prerecorded & uploaded to your curriculum on or before 30th July. 

During this video I'll teach you:

  • The importance of creativity for early humans 
  • Making and the flow state 
  • How the flow state alleviates anxiety & lifts mood
  • How creative activity can alleviate the negative effects of traumatic events on our mental health


During the video I will connect craft and making of any kind that a vast number of modern humans spend time doing, with the neuroscientific research showing that it can truly benefit our mental health.

At the end of this hour long video you will have a thorough understanding of how making, cooking and creative activity of any kind is an innate part of being human, can be incredibly mentally beneficial during and following traumatic events and can help us to connect to others. 

This is a workshop suitable for complete beginners.

Instructor

Emma Mitchell is a Sunday Times bestselling  author, mental health advocate, naturalist, professional illustrator and designer-maker. She studied Natural Sciences at Cambridge, spent time in academia studying molecular cell biology and was an technology consultant in emerging technologies in Silicon Fen until 2008, when her struggles with depression and anxiety led her to begin writing about the positive impact of both nature and time spent creatively on mental health.

Emma has written and presented films for BBC Springwatch and appeared on BBC Countryfile, Radio 4's Woman's Hour and Ramblings. She is a Guardian Country Diarist and has contributed pieces on nature and mental health to the Times, Big Issue, inews & Psychologies magazine.

Workshops

Emma has been teaching creative workshops with a focus on mental health for 15 years. She taught Anita Rani to cast yarrow in silver on BBC Countryfile and has taught classes at the Victoria & Albert museum, Cambridge University Botanic Gardens and Highgrove.

In Emma's classes students learn the techniques needed to make and draw beautiful things, but crucially she combines this with teaching the science that explains why and how spending time creatively can shift  brain biochemistry to improve mental health.

Watch the film I wrote and presented for BBC Autumnwatch

Click here to watch the film I wrote and presented for BBC Autumnwatch called 5 simple ways that nature can help your mood.