Arts Well founding director Jayne Howard is set to play a new role in leading creative health across Cornwall and Isles of Scilly.
The Penryn-based community interest company (CIC) is welcoming Olivia Beckwith to the newly-created role of development director, as Howard takes up a 15-month post as creative health associates programme manager with the National Centre for Creative Health.
Beckwith’s new role will ensure strategic plans for the CIC are delivered, developing the organisation’s pivotal role in creative health in Cornwall and Isles of Scilly, building on the achievements to date, progressing existing projects and programmes of work and developing new programmes and funding streams.
“I am a people person,” she said. “Supporting, championing, coaching and developing people and communities to thrive through the arts is what I love to do. Bringing the business knowledge and skills I have learnt in my previous roles at Unlocking Potential and Cultivator, and my own commitment to the arts as an illustrator and writer myself to help such a fantastic organisation to continue to grow their work feels like a huge opportunity and a massive privilege.
“I am very much looking forward to joining Jayne and the team and working with all the fantastic creative practitioners in Cornwall working in the health and wellbeing sector to make a meaningful difference for Cornwall through Arts and Culture.”
Supporting Beckwith on a part time basis, Howard will take the next 15 months to manage a programme which aims to embed creative approaches and activities in health and care systems across the country.
Funded by Arts Council England and delivered by the National Centre for Creative Health (NCCH), the programme will support the NCCH’s ambition to foster the conditions for creative health to be integral to health and care and demonstrate the power of culture and creativity to benefit the lives of individuals and communities.
This will in turn benefit Arts Well, as Howard will be able to bring the learning and knowledge from that national programme into creative health work in Cornwall, further strengthening the work that is already taking place here.
She added: “I’m really pleased about my role with the National Centre for Creative Health which enables me to take my knowledge and experience of working across the creative, health and care sectors into a national programme, whilst also bringing back new learning and intelligence to support our work here in Cornwall.”
