Our society editor Martha Sanders caught up with Elsa Bartlett, the Art society’s wellbeing officer, to find out how they have been using art to support students through the second wave of lockdown.

Last semester, during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic Art Society made headlines as they created and delivered over one hundred art supply bundles to isolating students.

Bartlett, alongside the other committee members, is committed to continuing supporting students through the medium of art.

This month, in the same week that the Tory government laid bare their contempt for the creative industries, LUU Art society have been exemplifying the importance of the arts through their Wellness Week events.

Over the course of a week they held a range of events such as: a Mind Matters Workshop, a Walk and Draw event, life drawing and an Art Wellness session.

Their ‘Walk and Draw’ event involved the society taking pictures of Hyde Park and sending them through Instagram so that isolating students had objects to draw.

The society also regularly share the different ways that members have interpreted their challenges through their online Instagram community.

Bartlett, who took an Art therapy course to help prepare for the Art Wellness week told the Gryphon: “With wellbeing week I wanted to try and find activities that could contribute to wellbeing.

“Some people get intimidated by art and they think, ‘oh you have to be really good’ but you just don’t.

“Everyone has their own creative eye and creative view and you have to express it. And the way to do that is by experimenting.”

The society will be holding another Wellness Week at the start of November and hope to keep using art to help students through lockdown.