Creative Alternatives was established in 2006 in Sefton, Merseyside, as a joint initiative between the arts service of Sefton MBC and NHS Sefton. From 2013, Creative Alternatives was fully funded by Sefton Council’s department of Public Health and our service flourished across the borough for 10 years! In 2015 the service expanded to St Helens when it was commissioned by St Helens Borough Council’s Public Health Service. Creative Alternatives now forms part of the Arts in Libraries programme for the borough, receiving additional funding/support via their Arts Council England NPO grant. Whilst the programme sadly ceased in Sefton in 2016 due to financial constraints, Creative Alternatives has continued to thrive in the borough of St Helens thanks to the ongoing funding and support from St Helens Borough Council.
Throughout this time the ethos of the Creative Alternatives programme has remained the same, with some small adaptations within our face-to-face groups. However, it was during the Covid crisis in 2020 when we developed a completely new online service so that residents of St Helens had continued support for their mental health during an extremely difficult time. This version of our programme allowed people to join from the safety of their homes which offered a mix of creative activity videos, mindfulness content, social forums and live weekly online group sessions. All our past participants were also provided with self-care advice and sign-posting information, relating to both the Covid-19 crisis and general mental wellbeing, through emails, newsletters and social media posts.
2025 saw the tenth year of delivering the service to residents of St Helens which is a truly wonderful milestone! A special celebration event was held at the World of Glass in St Helens to commemorate the anniversary on Friday 10th October 2025, which also marked World Mental Health Day. A small pop-up exhibition showcasing some of the artwork that’s been created over the past ten years was also launched at this event and is on tour around some of the local libraries until April 2026.
Looking forward, Creative Alternatives has recently been commissioned for a further three years of funding in St Helens which demonstrates how much value is placed on what the service has been achieved so far and the importance of non-clinical mental health support for the people of the borough.
The programme continues to be managed by the Alef Trust. Alef Trust is a social enterprise, working in online education and community development. Alef Trust fosters projects for human flourishing in the UK and around the world: aleftrust.org
