The benefits of art activities for physical and mental health are extensively documented in the fields of health and arts. The World Health Organisation (WHO) recognises that the arts can contribute to preventing illness; promoting healthy behaviour; managing medical conditions; and supporting clinical treatments. In this project designers, occupational therapists and mental health inpatients collaborated to co-create the Creative Wellbeing Program (CWP) an ‘arts-health practice’ initiative for mental health recovery. The program was developed through a collaborative platform that can be defined as a ‘lo-fi living lab’: a space similar to any living lab, but giving prominence to unsophisticated and improvised co-creation processes, based on DIY, hacking techniques and low-technologies used by occupational therapists and other health staff as part of their work. The program includes two main elements: a trolley system for delivering visual art activities; and a set of guidelines explaining how to facilitate those activities in ways that contribute to recovery. The combination of tools and guidelines offers allied health staff resources to run a program that is sustainable; helps them to gain conceptual and practical creative skills; and engages service users in meaningful activities that promote mental health recovery.