Creative Health Practices and Collections

London Arts and Health‘s Creative Health Sandpit is an informal space which exemplifies brilliant practice from the sector and allows members to learn, engage and explore in a structured yet open way. Across 2025-2026 we have asked our partners at Arts & Health Hub to curate a number of sandpits exploring facets of being an artist engaged in making work about health.

This session, taking place at the Wellcome Collection, will focus on creative health practices and collections. Join us initially for an in-conversation event with artist Nicola Field and Wellcome’s Collections Development Lead, Mel Grant, to discuss the types of works that are acquired and the process of how that happens. Nicola and Mel will discuss the sensitive considerations that have gone into the acquisition process of Nicola’s artworks, and the questions and challenges it has raised. After the discussion participants will be invited to join Nicola to creatively respond to relevant items from the collection, followed by an invitation to have a self directed roam around the museum.

Artist Nicola Field’s work integrates creative and critical practices, academic research and activism. Her critical approach to self-expression and often challenging themes unite authenticity, compassion, and solidarity. Internal landscapes, social norms, family systems and dreams converge in emotive, organic pieces that range from video, comics and ceramic sculpture to observational watercolours and large-scale digital imaging. Her commitment is to explore how the poetics of lived experience can illuminate the ways in which historical forces and social relationships affect our bodies, minds and identities.  

Nicola is author of Over the Rainbow: Money, Class and Homophobia (Dog Horn Publishing 2016) and is an original member of Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners.

Website: https://nicolafield.co.uk/

Instagram:

Images courtesy: Nicola Field

Arts & Health Hub is a London based non-profit organisation supporting artists that explore health, wellbeing and what it means to be human in their creative practice. They do this by providing peer to peer support, professional development opportunities, training and more.

Mel Grant (she/her) is Collections Development Lead (Librarian) at Wellcome Collection, a free museum and library in London exploring the past, present and future of health in a world where everyone’s experience of health matters. With extensive expertise in acquisitions, Mel develops models of ethical collecting and champions inclusive practices that honour and amplify the lived experiences of people who have been silenced, erased, or overlooked.

About London Arts and Health

We support artists, creative practitioners and health professionals across the whole of London and beyond. Promoting excellence and engagement in the field of Creative Health, and extending the reach of the arts to communities and individuals who would otherwise be excluded.

Through our activities, we work to promote, develop and support the understanding of what the arts can do to contribute to a healthy society, in London and nationally, and by so doing to encourage the use of the arts in settings beyond the mainstream.

We are the leading support sector organisation, advocate and expert for Creative Health in London.

Our vision is that the power of arts and culture transforms and enriches Londoners’ lives and health.

This is a ticketed event and bookings can be made through Eventbrite. London Arts and Health (LAH) members can register for a free ticket. If you want to join the free , you can register and join the event as a LAH member.

Host or Publisher London Arts and Health