Insider Art have two travelling exhibition of art work made in Art Therapy . Accompanying the paintings and drawings are comments from individuals about their experience of Art Therapy as well as research information about the value and effectiveness of Art Therapy.

The exhibitions have accompanied many of our events as well as being a display at various other events such as the National Institute for Mental Health England (NIMHE) conference in Brighton 2004, the Medical Humanities Association Conference at the University of Swansea 2004 and at British Association of Art Therapists stand at the Guardian careers fair in London, in 2004 and 2005.

Service User Views on the Arts Therapies.

�I got so much benefit real lasting benefits that I�ve been able to carry on with on my own, like a new way of doing things and different methods of coping. I think I got more from it than I ever thought possible�

�I really feel that doing this has given me a lot more tools to deal with the things I need to deal with�.

�It�s had a profound impact. I consider this to be the most successful thing that has happened to me in my mental health history. I�ve taken away what I did here and use it�.

�In the midst of what has been for me the shambolic mental health services, this has been my light�.

�I don�t feel a prisoner of my depression any more. I can�t tell you how much that means. I�d rather die than go through another dark time like the last one. But this has given me a new way of being shown me a different way of coping with being me�.

�There have been enormous changes in how I cope now ....I don�t think realistically I could have hoped for much more from it�.

�I�ve had profound and lasting benefits from this work�.

�I think its really important that the powers that be get to know how good these sorts of therapies are for people�

These user views about the experience of the arts therapies are from clients at The Creative Therapies Service, Exeter, from interviews conducted by Sarah Bennet. �When words are not enough�, MSc research, University of Exeter School of Psychology, December 2001.

The 'art' is often a relatively invisible part of Art Therapy. The images are not made for exhibition, and would not be made at all if this was the intention. One service user recently said he had withdrawn from printmaking and photography groups he had been attending in the community because he had felt under pressure to make work for exhibiting. He said,

��I�m not a performing seal, I don't want to balance a ball on the end of my nose} I want to splash around finding out how to be me.�

Paradoxically, it is this attitude that often releases a real creative power into the art making.
Behind each of these images are stories. The images are parts of individual journeys. But they also stand on their own as tributes to the creative resourcefulness of the human animal, and as powerful images in their own right.

We would like to thank these painters for this glimpse into the inner world of images and creativity that Art Therapy opens up.

"If artists rather than scientists, wrote diagnostic manuals of mental disorder, one might see 'disorders' like 'Pathologically Middle of the Road Personality Disorder': 'Emotional Blandness': Insufficient Fantasy Life': 'Arts Aversion' 'Reality Obsession' or 'Aspiritual Personality'."
Peter Chadwick, Personality as Art: Artistic Approaches in Psychology, p99. PCCS Books 2001,