Together with a local mindfulness business, Tranceform Therapies, the Stirling Smith has been hosting free online mindfulness sessions on our Facebook page.

The sessions, which began on 13 May, take place every second Wednesday via Facebook Live and look at a different painting each time. The first session focused on A Spring Idyll by the Scottish artist Thomas Bromley Blacklock and received some great feedback.

‘We are committed to enhancing health and wellbeing through engagement with our collection and had been planning on creating mindfulness sessions in our galleries this summer,’ said Nicola Wilson, the collections manager at the Smith.

A Spring Idyll by Thomas Bromley Blacklock was used in the inaugural session

‘Our exhibitions officer has been attending online mindfulness sessions with Louise Cullen from Tranceform Therapies during lockdown and simply asked if she’d be interested in working with us and our collection to bring these sessions online.’

Cullen is a mindfulness coach and runs her Tranceform Therapies business from her home in Stirling. She has a worked with a range of organisations, including Prudential, Creative Scotland, Moet Hennessey, and BenRiach Distillery, on programmes to support their health and wellbeing strategy.

The sessions are free to attend and will last 30-45 minutes.  To join, go to the event page and select ‘attend’ if you have a facebook account and you will receive a notification when the video is live.  If you don’t have an account, just go to that page at 7pm Wednesday 10 June or 24 June.  If you would like to see and experience the past sessions, the videos can also be found on the event page.  We hope to see you at the next Mindful Art session on Facebook!