Hearts & Minds

Hearts & Minds is a Scottish arts-in-health charity using the art of therapeutic clowning to encourage communication, interaction and laughter to improve the health and well being of our participants. Our practitioners are professional performing artists who are specially trained to use their skills and techniques to build meaningful and personal relationships with children and young people with long term health conditions and complex learning needs and people living with dementia. We help them overcome the challenges and stresses of their illness or medical condition. We have two main programmes - we deliver our Clowndoctors Programme in hospitals, hospices and respite units where we work with babies, children and young people who have short and long term health conditions and sometimes life limiting conditions. We also work with children with complex support needs in special educational schools to support the learning taking place in the classroom. The Elderflowers Programme engages with people living with dementia in specialist dementia wards and long term care environments. We also run workshops for Carers of people living with dementia at home. Raising funds through Trusts & Foundations, Corporate Support and Individual Giving is crucial to being able to support delivery of our programmes.