Black Men (young and old) wanted for a 6 month creative arts project that seeks to improve Black men’s mental health & wellbeing and access to services.

You will be working on a weekly basis along with a range of creative arts practitioners/facilitators and health professionals to create material and resources that explores HOW Black men can improve their health & wellbeing as well as improve the quality of services provided for them.

Produced by Tony Cealy of the The Black Men’s Consortium

The Black Men’s Consortium Better Health & Wellbeing project is a 6 month community-led inquiry project in which Black Men of African Descent create and perform sketches depicting their reality of mental health and wellbeing services in the post Covid-19 world.

The local community will share their ideas to transform that reality and through active methods we will search for alternatives for building solidarity and better health and wellbeing services for Black men.

After a long pandemic, Black men will actively reconnect with one another in their communities and networks to co-create spaces where men can have a dialogue about their experiences of mental health services, where many issues need exploration and change. We will then promote active and horizontal dialogue with mental health and wellbeing services.

The project aims to break down the barriers between Black men’s lived experience of mental health services, health professionals and the clinical settings through the presentation of various sketches and real-life scenarios. These sketches will provoke interventions, stimulating the audience to collaborate on strategies to overcome the barriers represented in the sketches. They also enable reflection on best practice, and working together to improve service delivery for Black men.

The project will be documented through photography, graphic animation, storyboards, video and podcasts creating educational resources. We intend to stimulate and develop interactivity in drama in order to: connect art and politics for system change; and spread messages of solidarity and implement better mental health services for Black men.

Our starting questions are:

• What are the forms of interactivity and participation in community theatre that can help this process?
• How the connection of arts & politics reach out into our neighbourhoods, towns and societies for transformational change?