We are delighted to announce that we have received funding from Heritage Lottery Fund to run a new Arts and Heritage project this year called Cabinets of Curiosity. This is a partnership project lead by Inside Out Cymru working with Monmouthshire Museums, The Winding House (Caerphilly Borough Council) and the National Roman Legion Museum, Caerleon.

Inside Out Cymru is an arts and mental health charity working across Gwent. In the past 6 months we have been working with the three museums to develop a collaborative heritage project that will be aimed specifically at people with mental health issues and their carers.

Participants will have an opportunity to work with a professional artist and museum staff to explore objects from the collections and create artistic responses to them. These artworks will be gathered to form ‘cabinets of curiosities’ which will be exhibited locally before being toured around the Gwent region with the other cabinets and shared through People’s Collection Wales in Autumn 2018.

We hope that the project will help to break down barriers to engagement and widen participation in local heritage for people who experience mental illness and their carers. We also hope that participants mental wellbeing will improve through engagement with the creative arts and heritage interpretation processes. By the end of the project we would like to see participants feeling more confident in attending and engaging with public museums.

If you would like to take part in this project or know someone who does please get in touch with us at info@inside-out-cymru.org.