Creativity is not just for artists, it’s for everyone
About us
At CoCreate, we offer the tools and safe spaces for you to explore self-expression. Creativity helps us rediscover our playfulness, finding joy and wonder again in everyday life, and with others.
It’s how you feel
Your journey with us can build a sense of inner strength, completeness, and wellbeing. We offer a better way, providing the tools needed to foster deeper conversations and connections with ourselves and others around us. The work we do goes beyond our lifetimes, as being creative is not just beneficial for individuals but essential for all of us over the long term.
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Got an idea but not sure how to get it started? We’ll work with you from the first spark of inspiration through to the final report, helping you design and deliver a project you’ll be proud of. Our support includes consultation, research, training, project design and delivery – all aimed at creating meaningful projects that engage communities and help people feel better and live better. Get in touch for an informal chat about how we can CoCreate together.
Our services
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We know evaluation matters – not just for funders, but for learning, improving, and sharing your impact. As practitioners, we understand the challenges of making evaluation both meaningful and manageable. Using a mix of creative and traditional methods, including Theory of Change, we’ll help you capture outcomes and stories that reflect your work. Whether built in from the start or added at the end, we’ll work with you to shape an impact narrative that makes sense and makes a difference.
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We offer training for artists, organisations and commissioners who want to deliver or support participatory arts. For artists, we provide mentoring and bespoke packages to help develop creative practice in community settings. For organisations, we offer training that builds knowledge and confidence to design effective programmes. Topics range from project planning, ethics and accessibility to evaluation, wellbeing practice and working with vulnerable people. Join one of our workshops or contact us to create a tailored package that meets your needs.
Meet our directors
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Co-director
Anna is a lived experience, socially-engaged artist, a creative health specialist and an experienced workshop facilitator. During her many years working in local authority arts development she has worked with numerous groups, individuals, artists and organisations on wide-ranging creative projects.
A confident and experienced workshop leader, Anna is highly skilled in supporting participants to explore art-making as a means of reconnecting with themselves; maintaining mental health and emotional wellbeing. She is passionate about the ability of the arts to build resilience, aid recovery, improve quality of life, to connect people and to help us make sense of our experiences.
Anna brings her skills in mixed media visual arts, storytelling, puppet-making and puppetry. Her work with CoCreate takes her into hospitals, community and cultural venues, parks, woodlands and online where she invites participants to pause, take notice, be curious and play.
Anna holds a Level 3 British Sign Language qualification and is Mental Health First Aid trained.
Talk to Anna about working with Deaf communities, with elders and young people, in hospitals and natural settings, through stories, puppetry and visual arts.
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Co-director
Gemma is a lived experience theatre maker, community artist, and creative health specialist.
She has a BA, and MA in Contemporary Theatre, and her practice centres around auto/biographical performance, writing for performance, and devising.
She’s been working in Arts & Mental Health since 2007 and has a wide range of experience in both creative and leadership roles, working across a wide range of sectors in Education and Health as well as with cultural venues, touring performance companies, and the VCS sector.
Gemma brings her passion and deep knowledge of arts and mental health work to regional and national conversations as Culture Health and Wellbeing Alliance Regional Champion, and as Creative Health Associate with Arts Development Company.
Talk to Gemma about theatre and writing projects, young people and adults, CPD, training or consultation needs.
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Co-director
Rosie is a visual artist, creative health specialist, and community arts practitioner whose work explores place, sustainability, and the everyday.
She has over twenty years’ experience across the arts, including senior roles with the Arts Council of Wales and extensive freelance work in project management, research, and fundraising. Her participatory practice spans textiles, found materials, film, photography, sound and performance—creating spaces for reflection, connection, and care through creativity.
Rosie combines her personal practice with her role as Co-Director of CoCreate, leading projects that bring creativity into health, environmental, and community settings. She is passionate about the role of art in fostering connection—to ourselves, to each other, and to the world we share.
Talk to Rosie about visual arts and sustainability projects, creative health collaborations, community engagement, or consultation needs.
Meet our associate artists
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Emily is a movement artist and creative health facilitator based in Dorset. She delivers dance and movement-based programmes across community, health and educational settings using creativity and movement to support wellbeing, connection and health.
Her work spans youth mental health programmes in schools, community health settings, care homes and projects supporting underrepresented and underserved communities. Emily is passionate about making movement accessible, inclusive and meaningful for people of all ages and abilities!
Prior to her work in creative health, Emily enjoyed a performance career, touring nationally and internationally with renowned dance theatre companies in theatres such as Sadlers Wells, Berlin State Opera and Beijing 9 Contemporary Dance Theatre. She has also worked as a Choreographer, Rehearsal Director and Movement Director with a wide range of arts organisations such as The National Theatre, Royal Opera House and Oxford Playhouse.
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Melinda has over 20 years of experience in community arts, galleries and museums. She has worked continuously in the arts since graduating (from Glasgow School of Art, Environmental Art BA(Hons)), in 1998. Her creative practice is concerned with the human interaction with art and she creates sculptural, immersive installations in non traditional locations, to be experienced by all.
Melinda believes in the power of art, nature and human connection for wellbeing and is passionate about bringing that to her wider community. She managed the Sea Music conservation and engagement project for Poole Museum, programming creative education and engagement for the Poole visitors & BCP audience. She now uses playful techniques to teach art and craft, mostly inspired by nature, to vulnerable adults and young people in specialist schools and hospital settings; and also provides creative activities at community meeting spaces.
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Rachel Fullegar is a choreographer, performer and movement director working nationally and internationally in live performance and creative health. Her belief in finding collective joy and playfulness through movement has been woven through her creative projects for people across the lifespan, using collaboration to empower and embolden participants to develop their creativity.
She co-founded award- winning Gracefool Collective, creating performances nationally and internationally. Co-creations with older adults include Strike a Pose 2022, and Kick Off 2023 (Leeds 2023), and Dancing the Horizontal 2022 (British Council), examining innovative dance practices with older adults in England and Italy.She has worked extensively across the north of England for Qdos Creates and Yorkshire Dance, devising dance projects for young carers, people with dementia, school/college students, and disability and additional needs groups. Rachel was co-artistic lead for integrated company Raised 2016-19 and lectured at world specialist conservatoire Northern School of Contemporary Dance between 2014-2024, specialising in choreography and inclusive teaching practices. Rachel is currently training to be an Occupational Therapist at Bournemouth University.
Who we’ve worked with
All CoCreate projects are developed collaboratively. Together we work to make beautiful things happen; using the arts and creativity to enable people to connect, to tell their stories and transform their lives.
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Access Wellbeing at Hope House
Bournemouth Central Primary Care Network
Bournemouth University
Dorset Blind Association
Dorset Community Foundation
Dorset Deaf Activities Group
Dorset Museum
Extraordinary Bodies
Health and Nature Dorset
Lighthouse Poole
Millbrook Healthcare
Poole Museum
Russell Cotes Art Gallery and Museum
Talbot Village Trust
The Powerhouse Poole
Wiltshire and Dorset Deaf Association
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ArtCare
Arts by the Sea Festival
Arts Development Company
BCP Council
Bournemouth University
CAN/Public Health Dorset
Christchurch Primary Care Network
Dorset Council
Parks in Mind – The Park Foundation
Poverty Truth Commission
Salisbury District Hospital
Sandy Hill Arts
University Hospitals Dorset (UHD)
Victoria Hospital (Wimborne)
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BCP Living Legacies
BCP Neighbourhood FundCommunity Action Network / Public Health Dorset
Dorset Community Foundation
Dorset County Council
Health & Wellbeing Fund (NHS Dorset)
People’s Health Trust
People’s Postcode Lottery
Postcode Community Trust
Talbot Village Trust
The National Lottery Communities Fund
Contact us
CoCreate operates from a digital office, and we centre our activities within the communities we serve.
You can get in touch by email, the form on this page, or through social media. We’re happy to hear from you whichever way feels easiest.
Our door is always open for you to reach out. Please note our team works part-time and often remotely away from computers.
We’ll respond as soon as possible during working hours, which are weekdays from 10am to 6pm.
Email
info@cocreate.org.uk