The Horsfall Creative Drop-In is a Manchester Culture Awards Finalist

The Horsfall Creative Drop-In is a Manchester Culture Awards finalist 

We're proud to share that the Creative Drop-In at The Horsfall has been shortlisted in the Manchester Culture Awards 2026 for Excellence in Creative Health and Wellbeing. The award recognises creative activities that help people feel better in their body and mind and the winners will be announced on Saturday 14th November. 

Since 2019, the Creative Drop-In has offered a free, weekly creative space for young people aged 11-25 as a standalone offer, waiting for, alongside receiving or following one-to-one mental health support at 42nd Street. There’s no referral threshold or diagnosis needed and that is exactly what the recent independent review led by Professor Peter Fonagy calls for: support that is needs-led and diagnosis informed (rather than driven) without long waits available before, during and after assessment. 

The Drop-In is more than an art club. Every session is run by Creative Mental Health Practitioners who are artists themselves and guest artist always deliver alongside our Creative Mental Health Practitioner team, so the creative and therapeutic work are both equally held during the process. And while the Drop-In takes place in a group, all young people have one-to-one contact with the Mental Health practitioner when requested. 

There's no set project to finish and no pressure to make anything. Young people come in, see what's available, whether that's clay, paint, drawing, collage or more and choose what they are called to and want to do that day. For some, that means making something and for others, it's simply being in the room with other people. 

We know wellbeing and circumstances can change from week to week, so young people can come when it works for them allowing flexibility and access to support in a way that suits them. 

Young people also help shape the Drop-In, suggesting workshops and activities they'd like to try; we sometimes bring in artists and co-facilitate them and some young people go on to deliver their own creative sessions as peer practitioners alongside our trained Creative Mental Health Practitioners once their support ends.

At the Drop-In creativity isn’t separate from the support, it’s a way of being embedded in the support and the relationship.  We welcome the process over the product; there’s no right way of doing things. There's room for mistakes and plenty of space for a piece to change direction. That matters because many young people arrive having been graded, marked, assessed and judged on their creativity and have gone on to learn and internalise that they are “not creative.” Here there’s nothing to get right so young people can work at their own pace. 
 
For some it’s about slowing down, focusing on something, connecting with others or expressing something that's hard to put into words. 

As one young person put it: 

"No grades, no good, no bad – it's creative freedom." 

Young people have described creativity as something that "brings colour to life", giving them space to "breathe and be still enough to process things." They've called art "a focus and an escape," "a way of getting things out that can be difficult to say" and "a language" for when words aren’t enough. 

The flexible, pluralistic and young person-centred approach is one reason it works so well. Ethnographic research carried out by a young person over 7 months drawing on the Wellcome Trust active ingredients framework identified a set of active ingredients such as agency, social connection, mattering, emotional granularity and safe space that young people draw on in different combinations depending on what they need allowing them to create their own ‘recovery recipe’ alongside the Creative Mental Health Practitioners. 
 
They decide what they need, when and how long for and having this say is not a “nice extra” but is particularly beneficial for young people who have had little control over their own care. We have also noticed that our drop-in group attracts a lot of neurodivergent young people and many have shared that working creatively this way alongside connection and talking, providing various routes to expression makes support work for them. 

The Fonagy review recognises creative arts, play and connection as protective factors for young people’s mental health and it also highlighted trusted relationships and continuity as being among the strongest factors contributing to whether support feels effective calling for long-term investment in youth, community and voluntary organisations. 

None of this is new to us, with the Drop-In working this way since its inception and we hope this recognition see the power and benefits of creative approaches and the investment needed to open up opportunities like The Horsfall to more young people will follow. As one young person told us: “I would prescribe creativity as well as medicine.” 

For many young people, the Drop-In is a starting point and supports many young people on to individual and group creative projects at 42nd Street and with our cultural partners across Manchester. Others join The Creative Collective, which offers artist residencies, mentoring and paid commissions. As one young person told us it gave them “my own little toolkit which I can take with me going forwards.” 

Between April 2025 and March 2026, the Drop-In delivered 392 hours of creative activity. Around 30 young people took part each week, with a further 50 joining through one-off or short-term sessions. 

We've also taken the approach into schools, working with BeeWell and local schools to reach young people facing barriers to education including those who have experienced trauma.  Also, through The Horsfall’s role as Centre of Excellence we share this way of working with organisations in Greater Manchester through our Greater Manchester Young People’s Creative Mental Health Coalition and across the UK through our Community of Practice. 

Thank you to the young people, artists, partners and funders who make the Drop-In possible and congratulations to all this year's finalists. 

And some final words from Rod our Creative and Social Action Clinical Lead.
"For me the drop in was the crucial ingredient in our work - a space for young people to explore creativity without judgement, to find why they wanted in the process of creation, to find what was unique about them and which could be celebrated

The fact we have been shortlisted means so much to us – it validates that spaces of creativity are just as important as places of art. Art is often not created in art galleries but in spaces of community and we must ensure these places survive to ensure more people gain access to the magic of the process along with the power of sharing their work."

 
How to join The Horsfall’s Creative Drop-In? 

 
If you’re a young person aged 11-25 who would like to join our Drop-In you can find out more and sign up here: https://www.42ndstreet.org.uk/event-listing/creative-Drop-In-space/ 
 

It’s free, you can come when you like and there is no experience required. 

If you know a young person who could benefit from the Creative Drop-In, please share this with them or with their family, school or support worker.