“We get sick alone and we get well together,” says Waitaki Creative Wellbeing facilitator and artist Natalie Carpenter.

After more than three years of providing help to people in mental distress, Waitaki Creative Wellbeing’s funding has been cut.

Natalie and Toni Huls have run weekly art sessions in Ōamaru, Kurow and Palmerston, offering a safe space and community for people struggling with mental health.

“So we've existed for the past three and a half years,” Natalie says. 

“Initially for the first six months it was a pilot programme, and then we secured three years of funding through the Ministry of Culture and Heritage.”  

The outreach programme was part of a Covid-era community support programme, facilitated by Dunedin-based Artsenta, which is part of the non-profitable Creative Arts Trust.

Artsenta director Paul Smith says the total funding loss was $150,000 per annum, which paid for two programmes in North and Central Otago.

“So we had two staff in Central and two in Waitaki. We still receive a small amount of funding from Te Whātu Ora to continue the programme, but it has had to be reduced now that the Ministry of Culture have discontinued their funding,” Paul says.

Natalie says with the “meagre amount” that Te Whātu Ora funds and a small top-up from the Creative Arts Trust, there is enough money to continue running the Ōamaru programme.

“But we have to cut the rural.”

The women are concerned that once again, it is the rural services that are missing out.

Some of the work from the Kurow Creative Wellbeing group hanging in a main street window last year. Photo: Supplied

“Honestly, Nat and I worked and tried and crunched numbers and did everything, you know, because we were asked to find the money, basically, and it's just sad for us that those services miss out,” Toni says.

Paul says the funding programme was called the CARE Fund and it was the first time there had been a nationwide funding programme for creative spaces like Artsenta.

“It is a real shame that it has stopped and we really feel for the people who are going to be affected by this change.” 

The funding stopped at the end of August, but Artsenta has kept the programme running until the end of the year using its reserves, but that’s only sustainable for so long, he says.

“We would love to be able to deliver a comprehensive regional programme, but we need a reliable funding source so we can deliver a consistent programme for the community rather than going from one funding application to the next,” Paul says. 

Feedback from participants has been very positive, and the creative focus and sense of peer support generated through Waitaki Creative Wellbeing is “really valuable”, he says.

“Toni and Natalie have done a wonderful job leading this programme and we will continue to support them to run the Ōamaru sessions while we to talk to funders like Te Whātu Ora about the value of this initiative.”

Each class has space for 10 people. Ōamaru is full, and there are six people in the Kurow class and eight in Palmerston. 

Natalie appreciates they are talking about what appears to be small numbers, but says it is a significant amount for the population of Kurow in particular.

“So if you're reading this article and you see only six people - those six people might stay for six months and then you have someone new come along and you might hold them in the space for a little while and so it's not, you know, it's not those six people forever.

“As they move towards wellness, or as they need it, they might move on to something else. But it just might have given that impetus for them to get back to work, you know, it's all those little steps that get you up and out of bed to meet people again,” she says. 

While art is not everybody’s “thing”, the classes are also about re-wiring your brain, trying something new, finding a sense of purpose and opening up possibilities. 

Toni says she is particularly concerned about the services being cut in the Waitaki, while the “ripple effect” of recent tragedies still affects people.

At times like these it becomes apparent that the benefit of helping one person in mental distress has a knock-on benefit for the family, friends and community around that person.

Ōamaru-based counselling psychologist Anna Farmer, of Otago Psychology and Counselling Support says living with mental health difficulties can be isolating and the Creative Wellbeing classes are invaluable for helping people feel less alone.

“They provide reliable access to a community of people who are prepared to truly understand and accept whatever difficulties someone might be experiencing,” Anna says.

“Those at Creative Wellbeing offer the hard-won wisdom drawn from their own lived experience, and the focus is always on the person, rather than their diagnosis.”

Anna says she has made numerous referrals to Creative Wellbeing over the years and the service has played an important role in the recovery of many people in the community.

Toni says the referrals from other mental health professionals reaffirm that what they are doing works.

“That says to me that they really trust us, they really value the work we do, and actually, we get letters from mental health services or social workers saying that the outcome for their people is absolutely incredible.”

But the programme is not exclusive, and people can self-refer too, potentially before they need any form of diagnosis, to receive peer support.

“It's people who are lonely, isolated, or as a result of trauma, and trauma can happen to anybody - we can't control that,” Toni says.

“So it could be the death of a loved one. It's just unexpected things that happen in our life.”

Natalie says research has shown the more connected people are, the longer they live, and the faster they recover when ill. 

“We get sick alone and we get well together, and I think that is at the core of what we do.”

While Nat and Toni are “deeply saddened” to lose their rural classes, they still want to be positive about the service remaining in Ōamaru, and think there is potential for it to grow, if the community supports it.

They are reluctant to talk about Mike King’s charity, I Am Hope, which has been allocated $24m over four years from the Government, but there is an element of frustration that the person who makes the most noise gets the most money.

“Yeah, it's hard to watch. For us being paid an average hourly wage, you think about it like that . . . we do the tough, tough work,” Toni says. 

But she can’t and won't share her stories to get attention. She won’t share on social media about the people she deals with who are at their sickest and self-harming, to get more funding. 

“And so what happens is the likes of Nat and I, in the work we do . . . we're just dissolving and being overshadowed by these wonderful machines with social media and hysteria and a lot of emotive stuff. But we never use our people, because we are the people.

“We're never going to do that to get the funding.”

Read more about Creative Wellbeing here.