Prince William and Kate Middleton Get Playful During First Joint Outing Since Prince Louis’s Birth

Joyce Chen
Updated

Prince William and Kate Middleton showed off their playful sides during an outing together Tuesday for the first Global Ministerial Mental Health Summit, while adding their personal marks on a piece of art created especially for the initiative.

The royal couple was filmed admiring artist Dairo Vargas’ painting when Vargas offered up a brush to both Kate and William, encouraging them to add their own brushstrokes to the piece, titled “Someone to Turn To.”

Middleton, 36, took Vargas up on his kind gesture, adding a small stroke onto the canvas. “That’s pretty much ruined the picture,” William, also 36, teased. Then, taking the brush from her hands, he poked fun at himself. “This is how you properly ruin a picture,” he said as he made broad brush stroke in the lower right corner of the painting.

“This is very brave of you,” Middleton told Vargas with a laugh. Vargas later told the gathered crowd that he hoped other attendees would feel free to add to the painting in a symbolic show of how everyone can lend a helping hand in tackling mental health issues.

The Global Ministerial Mental Health Summit brought together political figures, academics and policymakers from around the world to discuss issues surrounding mental health. Both the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge have focused heavily on mental health in recent years, and even launched their Heads Together campaign in 2016 as a way to unite different charities working to provide resources for those in need and to erase stigmas attached to mental health.


Prince William and Catherine Duchess of Cambridge
Global Ministerial Mental Health Summit, County Hall, London, UK – 09 Oct 2018
The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge attended the first Global Ministerial Mental Health Summit on Tuesday, October 9. (Credit: Photo by REX/Shutterstock)

During the event, Will and Kate also met with a number of young people who spoke about their own experiences with mental health, as well as learned about mental health case studies in both the United States and India. One of the highlights of the event was when the pair sat on a Friendship Bench, a Zimbabwean project where “community grandmothers,” or those trained to help individuals struggling with mental health, listen to those in need.


Prince William and Catherine Duchess of Cambridge
Global Ministerial Mental Health Summit, County Hall, London, UK – 09 Oct 2018
The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge attended the first Global Ministerial Mental Health Summit on Tuesday, October 9. (Credit: Photo by Tim Rooke/REX/Shutterstock)

This was the couple’s first official joint outing since welcoming their third child, Prince Louis, in April. Middleton has been on maternity leave since the spring and recently returned to her official duties, while William returned home from a trip to Namibia, Kenya and Tanzania in early October.

Later this week, the couple will be joined by their two older children, Prince George and Princess Charlotte, for their cousin Princess Eugenie’s wedding to Jack Brooksbank at St. George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle.

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