☆ + ☆ = ☆ ☆

What a couple of weeks we’ve had! On top of the I AM symposium and exhibition, on Friday evening the author Will Self blew us away with his thoughts on Urban Psychosis at the Holden Gallery. This sold-out event saw Will on spectacular form questioning what it is to be disconnected from reality in urban life and I’ll share more of this very soon. The exhibition continues until 22nd August, open Monday to Friday, Details at the Holden Gallery. Read a report on this event by Nigel Barlow on the About Manchester website by clicking HERE.

I’ve not seen it yet, but the V & A have a new exhibition that runs into early 2015 called Disobedient Objects. “From Suffragette teapots to protest robots, this exhibition will be the first to examine the powerful role of objects in movements for social change. It will demonstrate how political activism drives a wealth of design ingenuity and collective creativity that defy standard definitions of art and design.” Looks brilliant. Click on the 'Occupy George' overprinted dollar bill (2011) by Andy Dao and Ivan Cash.

I’m really not quite sure how how to write up this blog without making any reference to the ongoing suffering of people in Palestine. So here’s a 2008 photograph by Taysir Batniji, of the ubiquitous watchtowers that constantly survey the people of Palestine, inducing an urban psychosis beyond anything I can imagine.

As Malaysian cyclist, Azizulhasni Awang made it to the quarterfinals of the men's cycling event at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow last week, two words on his gloves upset the Games authorities. With the message "Save Gaza" emblazoned on them, he continued a proud tradition of having the guts to use his position to raise public awareness and protest. As streets, homes, hospitals and schools fall to the onslaught, the number of Palestinians killed over the last 19 days has gone over 10000. Unsurprisingly, the Commonwealth Games Federation said the incident could be in breach of a rule avoiding "politics" in the Games, and said it will “contact the Malaysian chef de mission to discuss the incident and take any action," reported the Associated Press.

News coming in from China....
Liesbeth Avern-Briers who runs the arts and health organisation, Lizzie Bee in Hong Kong has made it into the South China Morning Post with a feature on her work in schools which focuses on mental health and wellbeing. Brilliant work Lizzie! Click on the photograph below for more on this.

Creative Conversations in Arts and Wellbeing

Is an event for artists and practitioners delivering arts and wellbeing projects. 

It's an informal supper club which will allows room for sharing practice whilst discussing ideas & inspirations. The first event will be hosted in Manchester city centre by 42nd Street; an organisation delivering services to young people under stress including counselling, therapy and group work including an arts and culture programme.

The session will have a focus on mental health and we will be joined by a couple of 42nd Street staff as we discuss good mental health in the delivery of arts and wellbeing projects, thinking about both participant and practitioner. Places are limited, if you would like to attend, please r.s.v.p to nic_on_tour@yahoo.co.uk by Thursday 7th August with a couple of lines stating how this topic relates to your work. 

Wednesday 13th August, 5-7pm @ 87-91 Great Ancoats Street, Manchester, M4 5AG

Baring Foundation Arts and Older People Programme 2014 Opens for Applications 

The Baring Foundation has announced that its Arts Projects programme 2014 is now open for applications. The programme will continue its theme of arts and older people. This year, the Foundation are inviting professional arts organisations to commission work with older artists (70+) who have the craft, the vision and the interest to explore age and ageing and to produce imaginative, original and compelling new works in any medium for public exhibition, performance, publication or digital distribution.

The lead applicant must be a not for profit arts organisation working in the UK, whose core purpose is commissioning, presenting, or producing arts (music, dance, theatre, visual arts, literature, film, or multi-disciplinary forms). Lead applicant arts organisations must have an income in 2013-14 of at least £400,000. Education establishments, hospitals, care homes and housing associations, local authorities, general charities and other non-arts bodies may be involved but may not be the lead applicant. Grants within a range of £5,000 to £25,000.

There is a two stage application process. The closing date for stage 1 applications is the 1st September 2014. Applications successful at this stage will be invited to submit a full proposal by the 10th November 2014. www.baringfoundation.org.uk/program.htm

Grants to Help New, Innovative Visual Arts Projects 

The Elephant Trust has announced that the next deadline for applications is the 29th September 2014. The Trust offers grants to artists and for new, innovative visual arts projects based in the UK. The Trust's aim is to make it possible for artists and those presenting their work to undertake and complete projects when confronted by lack of funds. The Trust supports projects that develop and improve the knowledge, understanding and appreciation of the fine arts. Priority is now being given to artists and small organisations and galleries who should submit well argued, imaginative proposals for making or producing new work or exhibitions. Arts Festivals are not supported. The Trust normally awards grants of up to £2,000, but larger grants may be considered. http://elephanttrust.org.uk/docs/intro.html

Random Acts Network Applications Sought 

The Arts Council has announced that it plans to invest up to £3 million funding to fund five new Random Acts Network Centres over a 3 year period 2015-18. As part of this plan, Arts organisations can now apply for up to £600,000 of funding to form and lead brand these new Random Acts Network Centres. The aim of these centres is to create partnerships with other cultural, educational and creative media organisations, help develop young talent, aged 16-24, and provide entry points for the arts and creative industries. Each partnership will form a ‘network' within each of the five Arts Council Areas (London, North, Midlands, South East and South West) to deliver education, training and production support to facilitate the creation of around 120 high quality short films per year (approximately 24 films per network per year) for distribution on Channel 4 platforms. Films produced by the network centres will be played on the Random Acts strand on television and online. Applications should be for work that will be undertaken between February 2015 and March 2018. The deadline to submit applications is 5pm on 25th September 2014. Read more at:

http://www.artscouncil.org.uk/funding/apply-funding/apply-for-funding/random-acts-network-centres/

Funding for Artists and Bands 

PRS for Music Foundation and Arts Council England have announced that the next application deadline for the Momentum Music Fund is the 12th August 2014. The Momentum Music Fund is a £500,000 fund to develop the careers of talented artists and bands. It is anticipated that grants of between £5,000 and £15,000 will be awarded to between 50 and 75 artists/bands over the next 2 years. Applications can be submitted by the artists themselves or those who are working on their behalf, e.g. a manager, an independent label or publisher. Priority will be given to those that haven't been funded by PRS for Music Foundation in the previous 12 months.

http://www.prsformusicfoundation.com/Funding/Momentum-Music-Fund

...towards A RECOVERIST MANIFESTO

Last Thursday saw partners from across Europe coming together to celebrate the work of the I AM: Art as an Agent for Change project. The symposium was a rip-roaring success with lots of passion and vision from speakers including Zoe Welch from Lifeline who set the UK recovery movement in context for us. This was followed by Dr Zoe Zontou from Liverpool Hope University who shared her vision for addiction to be re-framed in terms of social activism. Following presentations from partner organisations in Italy and Turkey, it was superb to hear the voices of Joe from Pescara and Carl from good old Blighty, whose poem, I Annihilated God for U was profound and moving - and just brilliantly performed. I can’t thank you both enough. The artists Cristina Nunez and Ali Zaidi passionately shared their experiences and background to their participatory work with the delegates. This was all wrapped up in an illuminating and honest debate, and it was heartening to see people had come from as far as Brighton in the UK and superb to meet so many people in recovery - new faces and old friends.

I gave a presentation (of sorts) of the first iteration of the Recoverist Manifesto which you can see a more tempered version of, by clicking on the image above. But it is the sort of thing that needs performing. A gentle warning - it contains the f-word! But you’re an adult - you can cope! A written version of the Recoverist Manifesto with all sorts of augmentations and enhancements from new voices, will be published online in September alongside an oh-so-limited-edition, trilingual hard-copy!

The opening of the exhibition of work by Cristina Nunez, Selda Asal and Ali Zaidi - I AM: Memoirs of Addiction - followed the symposium and is open to the public until the 31st July. Because the university is more ‘secure’ over the summer months, I recommend going to the new School of Art Benzie Building on Ormond Street and the reception staff will direct you to the Link Gallery. Alternatively, access to the Link Gallery can be made via the Holden Gallery in the Grosvenor Building on Cavendish Street, but only after 12:00 each week day.

The video Per te Mamma by Ali Zaidi, is available to watch online above. All this work would have been impossible to achieve without the project management and vision of Mark Prest, Director of Portraits of Recovery, to whom I give my big thanks.

All of the work will be available online shortly, on a dedicated website that will include the art works, Recoverist Manifesto and other elements of Italian and Turkish perspectives.

WILL SELF and Urban Psychosis

The Will Self event this Friday is completely SOLD OUT, but we will record the event and post online.

Arts & Health: An International Evidence Base update

The the new online International Evidence Base that interrogates the Long-Term Health Benefits of Participating in the Arts is available free of charge and I note from a couple of emails, that those of you using Explorer as a browser, can’t see the icon at the top right of the screen that links to the work! I recommend using Firefox of Chrome, but we are looking to resolve this and will post online next week. Great responses from so many people to this work. Again, my big thanks to Dr Rebecca Gordon-Nesbitt for her great work.

Wallace & Gromit’s Children’s Foundation 

The Wallace & Gromit's Children's Foundation has announced that its grants making programme will re-open for applications on the 1st October 2014. The Foundation supports projects in children's hospitals and hospices throughout the UK to enrich and enhance the lives of patients. Projects that could be considered by the Foundation include amongst others:

Arts, music, play and leisure programmes

Facilities to support families of children treated in hospitals or hospices

Care and facilities in hospices

Supporting children with physical and emotional difficulties

Medical equipment; etc.

The closing date for applications will be the 5th December 2014. Read more at:

http://www.wallaceandgromitfoundation.org/about/apply-for-grant/

Register and submit abstracts by clicking the above banner.

Austin and Hope Pilkington Trust 

The Austin and Hope Pilkington Trust which awards grants to registered charities in the United Kingdom has announced that the next closing date for applications is the 1st November 2014. During 2014, the Trust is seeking to fund projects that promote Music and the Arts and help the elderly. Grants are usually between £1,000 and £3,000 and are awarded for one year. Previous grants awarded include: http://www.austin-hope-pilkington.org.uk/what-we-fund/

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...in a week when a critical debate is to take place in the House of Lords on Assisted Dying, it's heartening to hear Desmond Tutu speak out in favour of serious debate on this, the most important of subjects. The debate takes place on Friday and you can find out more, by clicking here.  

For those of you who missed last weeks blog, Rebecca and I have been thrilled with the positive responses to the new International Evidence Base that interrogates the Long-Term Health Benefits of Participating in the Arts. Thank you.

APPG update...
I know some people are curious about the All Party Parliamentary Group for Arts, Health and Wellbeing (APPG), so I thought I’d just give you a flavour of the session that took place on Wednesday 2nd July. A full set of formal notes from the meeting will be HERE very soon, but these are my informal notes.

The APPG was really quite something, chaired beautifully as ever by Lord Howarth of Newport and with guest speakers Sir Robert Francis QC, (author of the Francis Report) Dr Elen Storm (paediatric trainee and award-winning poet), Head of Arts Strategy at Guys and St Thomas’ charity, Nikki Crane and her collaborator Dr Suzy Wilson, Artistic Director of Clod Ensemble. The framework for the session was The Care Act and the question: How the arts and culture can contribute to the quality of care following the Francis Inquiry? 

It was refreshing and inspiring to hear Robert Francis wistfully and with a smile, reflect that he wished that he had included an arts recommendation in his report. In truth, amongst other things, he used the group to share a personal account of his own mothers admission to hospital via a 7 hour wait in casualty and his provocative question - was EastEnders on a pay-for TV set, really the best cultural offer we can give people staying in our hospitals?

Describing hospitals as ‘bleak places’ he reminded us that it is poetry that communicates the reality of disease, citing poet Clare Best’s lyrical description of a breast cancer mastectomy, which had moved him in ways beyond any functional description of the procedure. He emphasised ‘the healing properties of the arts’ and described the arts as having ‘an important part to play in health and care.’ Perhaps some of his more potent reflections were on health care staff who start their careers with good intention and vision but who ‘have it crushed out of them.’ He suggested very persuasively that he believed that ‘the arts can address this.’

Questions and comments from the floor that particularly resonated with me, included Professor Chris Fowler from Health Education England. who questioned the that the evidence could ever be completely definitive, but describing the work needing to be a social movement. Former chief inspector of prisons, Lord Ramsbotham astutely pointed out that this work is about the ‘social process rather than a scientific process and the evidence can lead to a culture change in the NHS.’ 

It would be very easy to ask, is this just another talking shop? Well, I'm one of the most cynical, but what I see and hear, are passionate and committed people, who aren't chasing votes, but actively pursuing a vision for greater health and wellbeing - and critically - who see creativity, the arts and culture - as a powerful force for change. The full minutes will shortly be available from a dedicated webpage alongside the other material already available here. My personal thanks to Alex Coulter for her brilliant organisation.

I've had the pleasure of speaking at two public health conferences over the last couple of weeks and have been blown-away by the response of people in the field. It genuinely feels like we are at an important moment in this Arts and Public Health Movement. I have been particularly impressed by Valerie A. Little the Director of Public Health for Dudley's annual report, which in fact, is an Arts and Health report par exellence. Brilliant work Creative Health too! Click on the image above to see just what I mean.

URBAN PSYCHOSIS
Opened in the Holden Gallery on Friday evening. My thanks to Dr Steven Gartside and Zoe Watson for their excellent vision, curation, and planning. Whilst the Will Self event is sold out, I am keeping a waiting list, so click on his name to join it. If you have booked tickets, but can’t make it, I’d appreciate it if you would also click on his name and cancel your place.

Whilst at last years collaborative MORTALITY exhibition, I contributed an essay to the catalogue, to this year exhibition, I offer a tidbit below as my small contribution to this Urban Psychosis agenda. No offence is intended - well maybe just a little...

IN PRAISE OF THE UGLY BASTARD  

I’ve been obsessing over a few images recently, both of which somehow remind me of my childhood. One is a photograph by John Davies of the cooling towers of the long-gone Agecroft Power Station in Salford; the others are the aggregated urban fantasies of my hometown’s latter-day Fauvist, Chas Jacobs. It’s a cloying nostalgia from which I’m suffering, in which these works provoke a little melancholia and just a touch of impotent rage. It doesn’t matter if you don’t know these works; I'll explain my thinking.

In the late 1970s, I came into my own, initiating a retreat from the shadows of some familial dysfunction by starting to paint. I’d observed my mother doing something similar as part of her own escape into increasingly complex painting-by-numbers kits. This was considered high art by the family, and my own experiments in copying portraits of pop stars from the NME were considered a bit pretentious by comparison. Only my early emulation of the erotic fantasy world of Frank Frazzetta generated some interest from the men of the house. In truth, this kind of copying was lazy and uninspired. Eventually, art school beat it out of me, and I settled down into a flat and bland ‘style’, something akin to Patrick Caulfield’s colour-blind, half-witted acolyte. Although I didn’t quite realise at the time, I was really quite talentless. 

Over this same period of long hot summers and first kisses, I was increasingly aware of the slow decline of my home town, Morecambe. Its once grand promenade was witnessing the up-market Littlewoods transformation into a down-beat Hitchens, which, in turn, congealed into an anonymous discount furniture warehouse. Busy high streets have slowly emptied, their cinemas and swimming-pools closed. Tourists dwindled and, with the building of two nuclear power stations, a different kind of economy emerged, based on transient labour. Many were the hours that my brother spent with the navvies who set up camps on the building sites around our school, his appetite for drink nurtured at an early age.

Much of my distorted memory from this period is moderated by television, with its three-channel output burnt into my memory – the bleached out technology-obsessed utopia pitched at us through the lens of free-marketeers. How beautiful Spaghetti Junction looked alongside well-oiled industry when mediated by a smooth-tasting Cadbury’s aesthetic, Jimmy Saville promises, Diddy Men, Dirty Old Men and Bernie the Bolt. 

Like others who grew up in this era, I was peddled fast-moving and high-rise glamour – plumes of smoke from chimneys and curling around seductive mouths. I’ve found that aesthetic hard to shift, and have incrementally become drawn to the beauty of the discreet urban invasion of giant pylons, carrying the necessary electricity to televisions, computers and mobile phones alike. Like a latter-day Marinetti, I am continually enticed by our beautiful ‘scars’ on the landscape.

Is it unthinkable to love the belching plumes of sulphurous smoke that somehow enhance swaying cornfields? Does this mean I’m divorced from any neo-romantic aesthetic? The most thrilling part of a journey across England this week was the emergence of the eight water-cooling towers of Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station. In the early morning sun, these sentinels thrilled me to the core. Give me the Kalgoorlie Super Pit over any divinely created Arizonan land gash. Intelligent design? No. Imagined and created by human minds and hands. Quite thrilling.

Actually, there must be poets lying in brown-belt factory discharge, waxing lyrical about our augmented, liminal no-mans land. Weren’t Bernd and Hilla Becher doing something of that through their meticulous documentation of our industrial landscapes? It’s natural then, that I’m drawn to this sumptuous photograph of Agecroft Power Station taken by John Davies in 1982. 

As public art seems to balloon in size, we appear to be hell-bent on destroying these functional industrial giants. Yet, at the same time, the NIMBYs assert/defend their rights to a manicured or rustic Arcadia – those smug, self-centered guardians of our green and pleasant land, who rally the troops to protect their myopic individualism and who bleat the loudest when the tides rise and they can’t get the power on, hysterical when the phone signal goes and desperate for high-speed access to stocks and shares. So artists are drafted in to redesign electricity pylons to ‘blend in’ with the countryside or look ‘beautiful’, and those nasty radio-transmitting masts can be dressed up as trees, to disguise their function. Hoorah. You’re deceiving yourselves. Not in My Back Yard? YES, in MY Back Yard. 

I dream of the largest wind turbine being erected in my meagre back yard, its fat base bolted into Victorian tiles and its constantly moving shadow blocking out the light, like some great sundial, counting my days, soothing me to sleep. I can but dream.

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A Chas Jacobs design on a chip shop plastic bag, found in the gutter outside my home and which was the spur to write this doggerel

I recently had the pleasure of sitting with my fellow, pallid patients in the waiting rooms of my GPs surgery and local hospital, and it was with great horror that, in both these settings, I was subjected to the psychological battery of some dim-witted middle managers’ idea of an ill-conceived son et lumière  – on repeat! The local radio station, 96.9 The Bay, droned on through my extended wait in the doctors, whilst daytime TV was the dish of the day in the hospital. Force fed sound – local adverts, inane chatter and the music I’ve studiously avoided all my life. But it was the walls of the rooms that drove me to despair, peppered with nastily framed monstrosities that are the feverish delusion of local ‘artist’, Chas Jacobs. (no link intended...do your own google search) Imagine, if you will, some bilious flattened-out, artless rendition of purgatory, dressed up with figments of your own home town – a fifth-hand rendition of an opiate addict’s directions from one tourist hell-hole to the next. If I was the talentless mimicker of Caulfield, this is surely L.S. Lowry’s simpering, punch-drunk offspring. If an arts and health researcher had taken bloods, saliva, heart rate etc, they would have found my mind and body grievously assaulted by this deficit of imagination, in its bargain-bucket approach to aesthetics. Unnecessary harm was inflicted on me by our dear NHS. 

Those who create delusional romantic pot-boilers from the rubbish-strewn streets of faded seaside ghettos are oblivious of a deeper aesthetic. Let the dwarf mountains of Morecambe Bay, still bathed in Chernobyl's wind-swept phosphorescence, hold onto that temporary setting sun. Let’s imagine that Friday night booze-spewed tsunami engulfing it all. Chrome Yellow, Soylent Green, Purple Haze, Blue Velvet, Lady in Red, Lady Di dead (and dancing with some trumped-up hanger-on). Street loads of dying flowers to someone you never knew and despite all the caressing of HIV hands, she probably never really gave a damn about you and your 9 to-5 life. Pigs are eating pigs, cows are eating cows and we’re crying as we eat the horses, knee-deep in our own shit. Please Chas, this is the vision of dear Albion that needs your rendition.

My High Street is less the idiosyncratic idyl of Eric Ravilious, and anyhow, it has been replaced by the cloying stench of ‘hand made’ cosmetics, spewing out insidious pseudo-organic toxins from the open doorways of air-conditioned soap and candle shops. How I miss the sickly-sweet stench of my own childhood and the weekly rendering of animal parts at the poetically named Nightingale Hall Farm. 

The countryside can, indeed, be enhanced by a carefully positioned smelting unit. Derek Jarman’s little shack is only what it is because it hitches a ride on the shadow of Dungeness’s advanced gas-cooled nuclear reactor. No potted plants can detract from the beauty of this, the ultimate provider of all our consumer needs.

Diversity Mental Health Month: Why It is Needed and How It Came to Be

By Steve Koh, MD, MPH, MBA

July of 2014 is the very first APA Diversity Mental Health Month. This
emphasis on mental health needs of diverse populations is much needed. While we
have diversity oriented month observances for specific population groups like
the Black History Month (February), National Women’s History Month (March),
Asian Pacific American Heritage Month (May), Gay and Lesbian Pride Month
(June), American Indian Heritage Month (August), and Hispanic Heritage Month
(September), we have not had a dedicated month more broadly addressing diverse
populations and mental health issues.

I cannot overemphasize the importance of this month. For the first
time, together, we will bring attention to the unique and challenging needs of
the diverse populations with mental illness and substance use disorders, work
to decrease mental health disparities, and engage with diverse populations to
help promote and grow future mental health champions in the communities.

The concept for Diversity Mental Health Month came from a group of
participants in APA’s Minority Fellowship program.  The program’s goal is to eliminate racial and
ethnic disparities in mental health and substance abuse care by providing
specialized training and mentorship. The fellowship fosters those with diverse
backgrounds who have chosen to become physicians specializing in mental health
and to do this work with the diverse populations.  



But what happens when we go home? What then? We felt that it was easy to get
lost when we left our APA meetings in Washington DC. How do we galvanize our
colleagues at home to look at the importance of minority mental health issues?
To recognize the stigma of being an ethnic and cultural minority and also
suffering mental illness? To understand that many minority students do not
consider going into field of medicine let alone mental health profession? To
appreciate the importance of cultural competency and humility in working with
diverse patient population?

Without
involvement a coordinated effort by the APA, it was our belief that while we
personally benefited from the fellowship experience, our impact would be
limited. There needed to be a designated time for all of APA to bring attention
to this important patient population.  So
the idea was born to create a Diversity Mental Health Month. The APA Assembly asked
APA staff to help create a month designated to minority mental health issues
and for the APA to actively promote the month.

I hope that others are excited about this new endeavor of the APA as I
am. The challenges are great but together we can bring the needed attention to
this area of our profession.

Many resources, including an infographic with basic data on mental
health disparities, and brochures and fact sheets on specific populations,
suggested activities, video messages, and more, are available at www.psychiatry.org/diversity-month.