Be Happy With Who You Are

Be Happy With Who You Are is a joint project between LEVEL Makes visual art participants and participants of Little Canyon Collective based in Wirksworth.

The project explores the concept of being happy with your own form and your mind, and what happiness can look like. The two groups worked independently from each other and have each come up with a response to this joint theme that’s been driven by the participants. 

LEVEL Makes worked with visual arts facilitator Helen Jackson and naturally took more of an approach of looking at their physical form, and how their bodies move in space. The participants produced multiple works in response to this from tracing their own body shapes onto transparent plastic through to printing their form on different fabrics – layering paints, fabric pens and different colours to create work that represents their movement.

As part of Mental Health Awareness Week, Little Canyon Collective participants followed an approach that explored their thoughts and feelings, and how these can change on a daily basis. On each day the participants were on site, they documented their moods in a collaborative piece that began in pen and ink, and was finally printed at Little Canyon Printworks. The group also produced haikus, short poems about themselves alongside this work to explore how they felt in a different format.

Be Happy With Who You Are is on display in the Corridor Gallery at Level Centre from 8 September 2023 to 5 January 2024. The exhibition shows work in progress and the different forms the groups explored. 

Entry is free.  Open Monday – Friday, 9am – 5pm. No need to book, but please phone in advance.