“What really interested me about mindfulness was that it was a practical, useful skill that could empower and increase confidence in engaging with art.” (Louise Thompson)
Louise created Mindful Museums in 2024 to provide accessible ways of supporting people’s mental health through art and creativity. After fifteen years as Health and Wellbeing Manager for Manchester Art Gallery, she is now an independent consultant offering mindfulness training in museums and cultural spaces across the UK, including Wales.
The initiative grew from Louise’s work at the gallery delivering projects with Greater Manchester Mental Health Services Trust, supporting people transitioning from hospital to community living. After witnessing the impact of a 2012 project combining art and mindfulness to improve mental health, Louise recognised the unique ways mindfulness could foster engagement with art. She completed two eight-week Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction courses and began teaching formal mindfulness courses linked to art in museums and creative spaces.
As her practice developed, Louise found mindfulness more personally transformative than expected: “it was really significant for me, it made a huge impact, more than any other mental health skill; it’s an incredible tool for managing my own mental health.” She also realised that, like many others, she had grown up in a culture believing kindness was meant for others — self-kindness was seen as self-indulgence and discouraged:
“Mindfulness gave me tools to undo that upbringing which has been transformative for me as a person as well as for me as a parent and a partner.”
Louise recognised that the museum work had the potential to empower people who had never engaged with self-care, but she was aware that courses were typically attracting those already likely to engage with art and formal mindfulness training. She felt it was important to reach those less likely to attend either a gallery or a mindfulness course, knowing that combining both informally could have huge benefits for the community.
Through collaboration with different agencies, her inclusive approach of offering a creative entry point to mindfulness began reaching more vulnerable people — including those who had never felt comfortable in cultural spaces. As Louise explains,
“this approach had great strength in terms of engagement and connection, people could learn skills at the gallery that they could then use in their everyday life, not everything had to take place within the gallery walls”.
This is central to Louise’s work:
“It’s really important to me because of my background, even today people see art as being highbrow or exclusive. If you weren’t raised in a family that used these spaces, then you might think cultural spaces aren’t for you.”
She discovered that teaching mindfulness through art breaks down these barriers: people feel confident using their senses to notice colours, shading and composition, and realise they can legitimately engage with art — dismantling the societal and psychological barriers that excluded them.
“It’s a very democratic process – developing skills in present moment awareness, the noticing and returning from mind wandering.”
Following this high-impact work, Louise founded Mindful Museums to offer training more widely across the UK and abroad. Her Room to Breathe exhibition led to a research study with the Psychology Department at Goldsmith’s University of London. She also promotes trauma-informed training for staff wellbeing and for creating more accessible spaces, enabling diverse groups to engage with both art and mindfulness.
Louise is passionate about using creativity to improve mental health in the community.
“My lifelong mission is that every arts organisation and museum in the world, especially publicly funded ones, will have mindfulness-based offerings for people just as they would have a school’s program.”
She feels this is needed more than ever — and that the responsibility to respond to mental health crises, social division and disconnection belongs not just to health and social care sectors, but to all of us.
Mindfulness Wales wish to express their deep gratitude to Louise for kindly advising us in our work developing mindfulness trails in the National Museums of Wales/Amgueddfa Cymru.
Contact details:
Website: www.mindfulmuseums.org
Instagram: @mindful_museums
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