An impermanent art practice for everyone
let's get started
Every Seven Days is an impermanent art practice for everyone, designed to enhance our mental health, reduce stress, boost creativity and cognitive function, and strengthen our sense of connection with nature and community.
Taking part in Every Seven Days has helped many of us get through the shemozzle of 2020 and 2021, because being outdoors and making art feels good.
After resting up and taking a break, we have started up again with weekly themes in 2022.
You can follow the weekly themes on Instagram at @everysevendays2022 or sign up for our weekly newsletter here.
What is the Every Seven Days project?
Every Seven Days is an impermanent art practice for everyone, designed to enhance our mental health, reduce stress, boost creativity and cognitive function, and strengthen our sense of connection with nature and community.
You don't have to be an artist or have any tech expertise to be involved. The project has easy-to-follow guidelines so everyone can take part.
All you need is 30 minutes each week to create your temporary artwork and post a photo of it online with the hashtags #everysevendays2022 and #everysevendaysseventhemes.
Contemporary neuroscience has identified that creativity, nature and community all contribute to strong mental health.
EverySevenDays
seeks to work these in combination to give everyone a simple way to achieve a sense of well being and connection.
What are the benefits of EverySevenDays?
Taking part in EverySevenDays is a safe, fun and natural way to boost the feel-good chemicals in our brains.
Being outside in nature promotes serotonin. That's the mood stabilising chemical most commonly used in anti-depressants.
Walking - getting your body moving - creates endorphins. We're not talking about getting breathless though. Walk mindfully and be present, and feel the calm.
Just completing your temporary artwork and posting it online will give you a dopamine hit.
Complimenting the artworks posted by other people in our community gives you more oxytocin.
The bottom line is, taking part in this project will make you feel good.
You probably have everything you need to start today
If you have a camera on your smartphone and an Instagram account you are set. (You could still participate without these, but it's more fiddly.)
The only other thing you need is about 30 quiet minutes to take time out for yourself.
Why is this project on Instagram?
Many of us have a love/hate relationship with social media - we get that - but the best way to get involved with the EverySevenDays project is to post on Instagram.
Instagram is an app designed to feature photographs, where each post is a square, making part of a grid. It's an online gallery where every image in a feed is given equal weight.
By adding the hashtag #EverySevenDays2022 to your post, your work is automatically included in the gallery of artworks. Instagram is much more handsome and user-friendly than its much bigger and bolshier sibling Facebook. Plus, the community on Instagram is mostly amiable and supportive. Nice.
If you don't use Instagram you can sign up for our weekly newsletter here. It has each week's theme and other bits and bobs all in one email, delivered to your inbox every Monday.
This week's theme is: Curl and Unfurl
Take a quiet walk - in nature, around a garden or in a park.
Gather found materials while contemplating the theme you are responding to. (Fallen or discarded things, nothing picked or nicked.)
Choose a quiet spot and mindfully create your ephemeral composition.
Photograph your work, post on your instagram feed using the hashtag
#everysevendays2022
Acknowledgment of country
Wherever and whenever we walk and gather and create, we acknowledge the Traditional Custodians and Owners of the land. We recognise their continuing connection to land, water and community, and we pay our respects to Elders past, present and emerging.