Mental Health Awareness Week
To mark Mental Health Awareness Week, we are sharing resources from researchers and artists we work with whose projects focus on mental health issues.
Breathworks
Recent Humanities Cultural Programme project Breathworks explored the role breath plays in our lives, with activities ranging from an exploration of care and collectivity online to a breath meditation story for children:
https://www.youtube.com/embed/Yv9tS0m4NmEAfter Birth
Upcoming play After Birth, a Theatres Seed Fund project, uses original research and women's lived experiences of mental illness during pregnancy and after birth to raise awareness, reduce stigma and encourage discussion about maternal mental health.
The play runs from 10 - 12 June and tickets are now availabe via the North Wall Arts Centre.
Eating Disorders and Real Life Reading
As part of the Eating Disorders and Real Life Reading Knowledge Exchange Fellowship, Dr Emily Troscianko explored literary depictions of eating disorders, and how those with eating disorders interacted with them.
Below, you can watch a video considering the use of bibliotherapy for those with anorexia:
Care, at what cost?
From the Queer Studies Network, a consideration of alternative models of care:
'Care, among its many iterations, possesses an underlying core of compassion, love, and duty. In scholarly literature, it has more recently been presented as a ‘care diamond’, between the family/household – markets – public sector – nonprofit sector. However, what are the forms, spaces, and manifestations of care that have yet remained beyond the reach of scholarship, beyond the quantified confines of development narratives? Is there a cost to care that is immeasurable in terms of capital? Is there an alternative to our understanding of ‘cost’ that isn’t monetary; how can care be understood beyond the desire to socialize its costs, and what alternative exists to the paid-unpaid binary?'
Chrysalis
In this opening video from CHRYSALIS, dancer Aguibou Bougabali Sanou creates a narrative of transformation, hoping to leave audiences with the sense that taking flight is always possible - even if only in the mind.
The Art of Bearing Witness
Whilst art is often turned to as a means of expressing mental health problems, the comic is an underrepresented form. Professor Hillary Chute describes how ‘In the wake of widespread violence, people struggle and often succeed in inventing or reinventing modes of expression to accommodate the ravages of history’ in this interview on visual narratives and trauma.
Body Politic
Dance company Body Poltic worked together with Dr Bahar Tunçgenç to conduct a dance programme for young people, along with research on its mental health benefits. Participants produced dance pieces based on topics they were interested in, and a short video about the project will be released shortly. Find out more about the project here.
Moving Together
Interdisciplinary collaboration Moving together: Loneliness and connectivity explored how movement and music might help combat loneliness. Researcher Dr Bronwyn Tarr and physical theatre company Justice in Motion worked together with local charity Archway to produce the short film below, drawing on the expereinces and voices of community members.
Prehension Blooms
Likewise examining loneliness in the current moment, Prehension Blooms is a project intergrating robotics with dance as part of a wider exploration of 'social robots' - robots whose purpose it is to interact with humans.
Read an interview on the creation of the piece.
Photo by Tonje Thilsen
Practical resources for those struggling with their mental health can be found via Mind. Find out more about Mental Health Awareness Week.
