BE PART OF THE STORY
What do these pictures make you feel or think? Would you like to express your own situation? Are you looking for information our networks might help with? Do you have artwork – painting, poetry, music, photography – you would like to share? Do you lack confidence to get arty? Over to you! We are not a medical or counselling organisation. Just a bunch of people who got together around Alison’s pictures but if we can help in some Way we will try our best to do so.
RESOURCES FOR ORGANISATIONS
Many of the people who have developed The Way Through Project, not only Alison, are survivors of long-term illness or bereaved by cancer or have been carers for people with challenging conditions. We all feel that for at least some others there will be value in sharing the images Alison has created – for quiet contemplation or aids to discussion, for inspiration to creativity or ways to pass a moment or two in your reception area.
The project therefore offers organisations serving such people in terms of health and wellbeing with a variety of resources to this end. If your organisation would like to take up these resources please drop us an email. Obviously our own financial resources are limited so where we can we will help for free and if not we will enter into discussion with you about how we can go forward together. Clearly your distance from Aberdeen will be an issue to be considered.
Resources include:
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Way Through Alphabet prints (A4) can be sold at 50% (£5) to your good cause (on approval). Each comes with its own illuminated story page which shares the simple messages behind the iconography captured in each colourful picture – A for Apple, Amulet, Accordion, Angel etc. The full price is £10 per picture and the remaining £5 will be invested in the Way Through constituted group.
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Video presentation with images and accompanying text spoken by Alison herself. (This can for example be played on a laptop or projected onto a screen. It has unique musical accompaniment composed with inspiration from the pictures).
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Photograph book with professionally produced photographs of Alison’s paintings. The book contains a much wider number of pictures than included in the major exhibitions touring in Spring/Summer 2018.
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Link to this website for inclusion on your website. Not for resale.
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The Suitcase – an installation including original artwork by Alison not otherwise exhibited but also including other material. Together the materials packed in the Suitcase make up an interactive resource for exploring the Way Through in greater depth. This resource particularly concerns itself with issues around Identity and the use of Words in relation to health and wellbeing. Not for sale. As the materials are original and the resource intended for interaction, this resource will not be suitable for all potential sites/audiences.
PROMOTE THE WAY THROUGH PROJECT AND THE PROJECT WILL PROMOTE YOU
Our aim is to reach as wide as possible a number of people with a message of hope and wellbeing delivered in a totally unique Way. It is a project which has already had TV news coverage and which has both radio and TV documentary coverage in development as well as this website. It is visually captivating and has a programme full of events to take part in.  Our target audiences include not only individual people of Alison’s Baby Boomer generation but also professionals in the health and social care fields, employers and educators and their own audiences. It is supported and given status by the involvement of a range of arts professionals. It is informed by health and wellbeing professionals too. While the project will inevitably have an impact close to home in Aberdeen, the international oil capital of Europe, it is a wider story with the potential to capitalise on its connections to Edinburgh, Dundee, Liverpool, Basingstoke, Spain and even Capetown. It has added value in its involvement throughout the project of social enterprises and young entrepreneurs for whom it creates business opportunity. There are multiple vehicles for acknowledging the support of socially responsible corporates.
PUTTING THE FUN INTO FUNDRAISING
We set off in September 2017 with a £10,000 fundraising target to cover all the costs of the touring exhibition and resources for organisations including this website. By January 2018 we had reduced this to under £4000 through generous individual giving via a Go Funding campaign, local company support and huge savings through gifts in kind. The name of the Way through Project came, in part, from Alison walking 116 km of the Way of St James, the Camino de Santiago de Compostela in NW Spain. If you like walking you could turn it into a fundraiser for the project. If you prefer eating then you could bake Tarta Compostelana (almond cake) or any other cake you like and have a fundraising coffee morning. You could create a Name Cloth to go in The Suitcase which is part of the Way Through Project – friends pay a small amount to sign a cloth sheet in fabric pen – perhaps dedicating it to a loved one - and thus be included in the project.