Craft, ukulele's and baking classes are making ripples across the nation

Kate was in the police force for 30 years and was a first responder to murders, suicides, and domestic violence assaults while the stress was taking its toll - until she learned to play the ukulele.

Three years ago "life was very blurry" and Kate felt like she'd hit "rock bottom", so enrolled in a mental health course through the Wollongong-based MakeShift.

It showed her pastimes like gardening, drawing, or learning an instrument were ways to calm her mind.

"It brings me some joy, which I needed because I was really stuck. Some days are harder than others, but now my husband just tells me to go and play my ukelele if I'm having a bad day," she said in the new book Creative First Aid.

Kate's story is one of many featured in the practical guide by Caitlin Marshall and Lizzie Rose of MakeShift after Murdoch Books caught wind of how they were putting the spark back into people's lives.

"GPs and psychologists ... got in touch with us and said 'I'm sending my patients to your classes as a form of treatment because engaging in these workshops is helping decrease anxiety levels and depression'," Rose said.

"Then participants were coming up to us and saying, 'I haven't felt this way in such a long time, I'm starting to feel a bit calmer and a bit more connected'."

The pair began as a social enterprise more than a decade ago, running skill-sharing workshops in the Illawarra community like how to make sourdough or tips in permaculture or craft.

Since then, their work has evolved to a national scale helping many people from first responders to people suffering from loneliness or people affected by natural disasters.

Rose recalled working with a community that had been devastated by bushfires, then floods, and the COVID-19 pandemic, many of them older Australians who had "lived through a lot".

"We did some 'blind contour drawing' together where we all drew each other's portrait on a piece of paper without looking at the paper and without lifting the pen off the paper," she said.

"Everybody's picture was pretty wonky and pretty funny, and at the end [83-year-old] Margaret's face was beaming and her eyes were all twinkling. Then she said 'I felt like I just drew breath for the first time in so long'.

"Being creative is a little bit like drawing breath. It's like taking a breath in and then having a nice exhale, even if it only lasts for a few moments."

Creative First Aid also features 50 creative "prescriptions" to try at home, and stories from those who have found their way through trauma, anxiety, grief, and chronic illness.

Rose said you just have to find what "resonates" with your soul, whether that be starting a veggie patch or joining a cold-water swimming group, painting or strumming a ukelele.

"It's something that we can work with ourselves and do any day without having to spend a lot of money or go out and buy a whole heap of materials," Rose said.

"If we've got everything we need - rest and shelter and food and water - we will naturally play. And I think it's something that we forget to do as adults as life gets pretty serious and pretty busy."

Creative First Aid: The Science + Joy of Creativity for Mental Health, is published by Murdoch Books and in all good book stores and online from February 27.

TIME NEEDED

Start with 2 minutes

MATERIALS

A piece of A4 paper

Something to draw with (crayons, textas, Sharpies, pastels; whatever you have on hand)

This exercise is adapted from illustrator and graphic designer Marcelo Baez and his drawing workshops at Makeshift. His goal is to make each person recognise that they can draw.

Faces are everywhere, and this exercise also reminds us of how every different person our eyes fall upon is entirely unique. No two cheeks, eyebrows, teeth, noses, ears, hairstyles or complexions are the same. And that is quite a wonderful thing.

How to take this dose

Start with a blank piece of paper and draw four circles on it. Don't be too precise, they do not need to be perfect.

With the same marker, or a different one, make three quick dashes inside each circle. Make the dashes in each circle different. Again, don't overthink it, there is no wrong way of doing this.

Using as many markers or colours as you like, you now have six marks to spend on each circle, turning it into a face of some kind. You could spend a mark making a pink circle that becomes a tongue. Or a black triangle nostril.

Play with expressions. Do the faces look angry? Worried? Scared? Hopeful? Cheeky? Take delight in all the different and funny looks you create. Spend time falling into the activity, colouring in a bow tie or creating wavy curls.

You just drew four faces! And faces are often the scariest things to draw.

Benefits

Drawing as an act of play warms up our creative muscle. It gets us into the zone or flow that promotes a state of mindfulness.

By keeping things limited and simple - a circle, a line, six simple marks - we also limit the boundaries of our self-criticism.

Can we really be too critical about a face we've drawn that's made of three lines, a circle and some marks that we don't find perfect?

This story first appeared in the Illawarra Mercury.