We teamed up with artist Ben Poultney from Draw My Town to host two art therapy for cancer patients workshops at the Help Harry Help Others drop-in cancer centre in Birmingham. The workshops were part of Birmingham City Council’s Healing Arts week where a number of sessions and activities took place across the city. Here at the drop-in cancer centre we were delighted to welcome the super talented Ben Poultney who hosted the sessions with our service users and helped them explore their cancer journeys through drawing and creative art.
Therapy for cancer can come in many forms and we run a number of art based sessions for our service users but to have Ben here to lead the sessions was especially exciting after he made the trip up from London to host the workshops. Originally from Birmingham but now based in London, Ben is known for Draw My Town and his creative cartoon style drawings of towns and cities that can include you, family and friends in the pictures. He’s been commissioned to feature towns, buildings and landmarks from across the country so we were delighted welcome him back to his hometown and to work with and speak to our service users.
The workshops featured taking the service users on a journey of their lives and looking at where their cancer diagnosis fitted in that journey and the results for those taking part was amazing and eye opening. Taking a different look at therapy for cancer really helped the participants and enabled them to look at their own experiences from a different perspective with all of them saying how much they enjoyed the workshops and how they gained so much from speaking, listening and learning from Ben.
We’re hoping to work more with Ben in the future and draw on his experience and talent to help our service users in lots of different ways with therapy for cancer sessions.
