Join us for a workshop with Liz Atkin.
Date: 7 March, 1-3 pm
Venue: KENSR1 – Maps – University of Kent
Workshop with artist and educator Liz Atkin
The Centre for Health and Medical Humanities is planning a few events that will explore the role of creativity for health and wellbeing. Please join us for our first event, which is a workshop that will focus on drawing with charcoal. The process-led session will explore tactility and motion as a refocus for Body Focused Repetitive Behaviours. We will take inspiration from texture in nature with mindful approaches to mark making from small to large scale, culminating in a collaborative drawing.
This workshop will incorporate an outdoor element (weather permitting), and will be using charcoal for a collaborative drawing, so come prepared to potentially get messy! Materials will be provided and everyone is welcome, but spaces are limited to 25, so please do book your space through https://www.eventbrite.com/e/workshop-with-artist-and-educator-liz-atkin-tickets-560285969417
If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact the event organiser, Olivia Andrew, at chmhpg@kent.ac.uk
About Liz Atkin:
Liz Atkin is an artist and educator. She has Compulsive Skin Picking, a complex physical and mental disorder, but reimagines the body-focused repetitive behaviour and her experiences of anxiety into drawings, photographs, and performances. Liz is a mental health advocate and raises awareness for the disorder around the world. She has exhibited and taught in the UK, Europe, Australia, USA, Singapore and Japan. Her artwork and an archive of her advocacy for skin picking is held by the Wellcome Collection, London.
Before the Covid-19 pandemic, she gave away more than 18,000 free #CompulsiveCharcoal newspaper drawings to commuters on public transport in London, New York, San Francisco, Singapore, Cologne and more.
Liz is an ambassador for The Big Draw, the world’s largest drawing festival, focusing on the role of creativity for health and wellbeing. She teaches art, set design and drama to all ages and abilities, and works in therapeutic and educational settings such as schools, hospitals and hospices, prisons, arts venues and universities. She received the Unstoppable Spirit Award for Outspoken Advocacy at the TLC Global Conference for Skin Picking and Hair Pulling Disorders in San Francisco in 2018, and was a finalist in the Janey Antoniou Award with Rethink Mental Illness in 2018. Her work has featured on TEDx, BBC News, Women’s Health, Huffington Post, Mashable, Channel News Asia, iNewspaper, The Metro, AlJazeera and more.