Mental Health Awareness Week: Why Artists Open Houses Matter Beyond the Art

Written by Sarah Bagg. Artists Open House Coast to Countryside.

Every May, when I open my home for Brighton & Hove Artists Open Houses, I’m reminded that what happens here is about far more than the art on the walls.

When I first became involved in Artists Open Houses around eight years ago, it was not because I had my own work to sell, largely because I did not really have any. I simply loved the idea of opening my home and inviting people in to experience beautiful art.

What began that simply has become something far richer over time.

As my connections through Hove Arts, Hove Trail, and the wider artist community have grown, I have come to realise that Artists Open Houses offers something threefold: the returning visitors who come back year after year, the friendships and sense of belonging built within my immediate trail and local creative community, and the wider network of artists, private views, and opportunities that gradually expand beyond it.

What started as opening my home to art became, over time, a way of building lasting connection — with visitors, with local community, and with a much broader creative world than I had first imagined.

During Mental Health Awareness Week, that feels especially worth recognising. Because Artists Open Houses is not simply about exhibiting work or welcoming visitors through the door. It is also about the artists, hosts, and trail communities who create it, sustain it, and return to it year after year.

Beneath the practical reality of transforming homes into creative spaces sits something quieter but deeply important: connection, continuity, and belonging.

Creative Life Can Be Quietly Isolating

For many of us, creative life still contains long stretches of solitude. Much of making happens alone, whether that is creating artwork, building a business, or quietly working through uncertainty without constant feedback. I know that rhythm well.

I run my consultancy business largely independently, often from home or co-working spaces. I paint alone. Even running, which helps me clear my mind, is often solitary, although being part of a running club adds a different sense of shared rhythm.

Over time, I have realised I need both independence and connection, because while solitude can create space for ideas, too much of it can also feel quietly isolating.

That is part of what makes Artists Open Houses so valuable to me. It does not remove the independence that creative life often requires, but it shifts the balance. It brings people back in. It creates shared experience around work that is so often made alone.

A Multi-Hyphen Life

Alongside being an artist, I also work as a life coach, supporting people through creativity, life transitions, and questions of alignment, while my consultancy work remains my primary source of income.

During the pandemic, I read Emma Gannon’s idea of the multi-hyphen life, and although I was not living that reality yet, something about it stayed with me. At that point, I was training to be a coach, I had not yet launched my consultancy business, and I had only just started painting. But somewhere in the background was the sense that these different parts of me might eventually be able to coexist. I am not sure I have fully found that balance yet, but I do think that is what I am working towards.

There can sometimes be an unspoken pressure to choose one path, one identity, one thing to pour everything into, but I have gradually realised that approach does not really suit me. I get bored easily. I need variety. I like different parts of myself being used in different ways.

For me, the idea of a multi-hyphen life feels less about doing everything perfectly at once and more about building a version of life that allows space for multiple strands to grow alongside each other in a way that feels healthy, sustainable, and real. That is still a work in progress, but it feels far more honest to who I am than trying to force myself into a single lane that was never really going to fit.

How Continuity plays such an important role 

One of the things I value most about Artists Open Houses is the continuity it creates. Over the time I’ve been involved, it has become a steady thread of returning visitors, familiar artists, trail planning, private views, shared experiences, and evolving friendships.

That continuity matters so much to me and I know from conversations it does to others involved too. Not only because it creates opportunities to show work, but because repeated connection builds something deeper than one-off encounters ever can. Visitors return, Artists reconnect and Friendships strengthen. Local creative communities grow, and wider ones gradually open up.

For me, this has become one of the most meaningful aspects of taking part. It is not only about what happens over a few weekends in May, but about the relationships and sense of belonging that quietly build in between. Because wellbeing is not shaped only by what we do alone, or as one off experiences, it is also shaped by what we belong to more regularly. 

When Plans Change and Connection Steps In

This year, I had not planned to open my home at all. I had decided a break and reset was a good plan. I was really thankful to have been accepted to show my prints and cards at Albert Mews Studio, and was still keen to stay actively involved through Hove Arts as a trail contact. But through my friendship with artist Emma Christopherson, another possibility emerged: we could share my space for the first bank holiday weekend.

In practical terms, it made sense. I could offer her an opportunity to exhibit in Hove while also showing my own original work from home. But actually what mattered more was something deeper. I realised I did not really want to sit this year out. I wanted to remain part of it, not only through showing work elsewhere, but through the fuller experience of opening my home, sharing space, and participating alongside someone else.

What I had not expected was how much that decision would shift things for me. What could have been a quieter year became something collaborative which gave me a chance to my home and my work differently. And I am genuinely grateful for that.

Why This Matters for Mental Health

There is increasing evidence that engagement with the arts supports wellbeing, connection, and longer-term health, but beyond research, I see its value in simpler and more immediate ways.

I see it in returning conversations on the doorstep. In familiar faces each May. In the encouragement between artists. In trail communities. In the widening networks that grow from repeated participation.

None of this is dramatic, but it matters to me, and many others. Because mental wellbeing is not always strengthened through major life changes. Often, it is built through smaller acts of connection, continuity, creativity, and belonging. Through showing up, opening doors and through being part of something larger than yourself. This year, the timing was also even more perfect than I could have hoped.

What I Keep Coming Back To

At its best, Artists Open Houses is not only about art. It is about the relationships that form around it. It is about visitors who return, artists and hosts who create spaces, local communities that strengthen over time, and wider creative networks that continue to unfold in ways you do not always anticipate when you first begin.

For me, that is what makes opening my home worth it. Not only the artwork on the walls, but the continuity, community, and connection that grows around it.

Art may be what first brings people through the door, but what often stays with us most is everything that builds around it. It is this sense of continuity and connection that I will be returning to when I open my home again next year, in my 50th birthday year.