Impact & Reach
Since 2020, Re-Live has continued to grow the reach and impact of sharing people’s life stories through the arts.
323
people have co-created with Re-Live since 2020
1,800+
professionals reached through training and learning since 2020
129,000+
known audience reach since 2020
At the heart of this work are people — their experiences, creativity, relationships and expert knowledge, offering insights that can deepen how we understand ourselves, one another and the world around us. Working alongside professional artists, people co-create work that travels outwards, reaching communities, audiences and wider society.
People + Creativity
Re-Live works alongside people who want to explore and express their lived experiences through the arts, often building creative relationships that continue over months and sometimes years. Working alongside professional artists, people co-create through theatre, music, comics, poetry, prose and visual art.
“I felt as though she had watched the ‘movie’ of my memory and had been able to recreate that into her artwork.”
Claire, veteran and Re-Live co-creator
Coming Home, Issue One
“I never thought I’d write a song, but now I have something my family can hear that says what I can’t always put into words.”
Chris, veteran and Re-Live co-creator
A Space in the Woods songwriting project
Community & Connection
Re-Live projects bring people together through creativity. Some groups work together for a few months; others become creative communities that continue for years. Sharing experiences, making work together and listening to one another can create relationships that extend beyond the project itself, connecting people across different experiences, generations, communities and places.
“This group has restored my faith in women.”
Shine co-creator
Shine Perinatal Mental Health Project, in partnership with Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board
“I know that when I walk in the room, someone will notice if I’m struggling. That makes all the difference.”
Re-Live co-creator
Health & Wellbeing
Creative participation can support mental health and wellbeing in many different ways. Across Re-Live projects, people describe feeling calmer, more hopeful, more connected to themselves and better able to carry difficult experiences. Evaluations show consistent benefits for emotional wellbeing, self-care and resilience.
“The way I felt after the first session, it was like a weight had been lifted.”
Time for Me co-creator
Creative wellbeing project for social care workers
“Being able to tell my story and see it illustrated has been a profoundly moving and healing experience.”
Stan, veteran and Re-Live co-creator
Coming Home, Issue One
Audience Reach
Re-Live’s work travels far beyond the people who co-create it, reaching audiences locally, nationally and internationally through performances, comics, exhibitions, museums, festivals, broadcasts and public events. Stories have reached further through national television, radio and press, including ITV News, BBC Radio 4 and The Guardian, as well as through comics distributed internationally and held in libraries and collections.
“Absolutely riveting. Storytelling at its best.”
Audience response, Company of Elders performance
Permanent display
Coming Home, Issue Two is now on permanent display at Imperial War Museum London and Imperial War Museum North.
Training & Learning
Re-Live shares its learning with artists, health and social care professionals, students and researchers in Wales and internationally. Through experiential training, presentations and shared learning, people encounter Life Story practice and explore creative and relational approaches they can take into their own work.
Since the pandemic, Re-Live has pioneered ways of creating deep, relational Life Story work online, developing approaches that enable people to connect, create and share work across distance. Re-Live has shared this learning through training, while online performances and projects have connected co-creators, practitioners and audiences across countries and continents.
In 2025, Bloomsbury Methuen Drama published Creating Life Story Theatre, sharing nearly twenty years of Re-Live’s Life Story practice with practitioners around the world.
Practice & Policy
Re-Live brings lived experience into the places where practice, services and policy are shaped. Co-creators share their work directly with health and social care professionals, researchers, universities and decision-makers, creating opportunities for their knowledge and experience to contribute to wider learning and change.
Re-Live’s work has contributed to professional learning, research and wider conversations through partnerships and collaborations with NHS services, universities, veterans’ organisations, Welsh Government and national and international arts, health and research networks. Co-creators have presented alongside Re-Live at conferences, professional events and public forums, bringing their own experiences and expertise directly into these spaces.
People living with dementia from Re-Live’s Memoria group shared their experiences directly with the then Health Minister, Mark Drakeford, contributing to conversations that informed Wales’ first Dementia Action Plan.
Shine, created in partnership with Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board, brought women’s lived experience of perinatal mental health directly to professionals and service leaders. One senior practitioner reflected:
“This life story project not only showcases to our perinatal and management teams how important it is to listen to the women we support but also how important it is for us to stay relevant to improve our service delivery.”
Occupational Health Manager, Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board
