A two days Arts and Mental Health event 

This two-day event explores productive, radical, contemporary encounters between the arts and mental health, bringing together clinical, artistic and research perspectives that offer a re-interpretation of contemporary mental health science and practice, with a view of imagining a different future.

This year’s theme is Masked/Unmasked – the wearing physical masks to face the pandemic is a prompt to reflect on the metaphorical masks we wear to face the world, how we put these on to protect us from an unforgiving social world at the price of hiding the beauty of our differences. Interventions will examine how the arts can help us see behind the masks and sustain a new vision for mental health.

We welcome service users, mental health professionals, artists and researchers and any members of the general public interested in the way the arts can contribute to mental health.

Highlights

Onsite day-10 June 

• Theatre Temoin’s work ‘NHS Yarns’ comes to Queen Mary and will be followed by a discussion panel about the pandemic and impact on NHS and other key workers
• Performances and participatory creative and discussion workshops
• Exhibition of selected artistic work submitted by conference participants (see here below for how to submit)

Online day – 11 June – Live Captioning Available 

• Artist’s Keynote: “Birdsong from In-observable Worlds” by acclaimed arts Dolly Sen
• Maria Grazia Turri on sketch for a Manifesto for the Arts and Mental Health
• Parallel panels including:
• Autistic unmasking and performing Beingness
• Phakama on the language of resilience
• A theatre company unmasking the life and work of a forgotten mad artist from the Faroe Islands
• Masking and masculinity

click here to book day 2 

Contribute

Mad Hearts is inviting contributions on the theme of Masked/Unmasked – whether thinking of physical masks and pandemic, or the metaphysical masks we wear to face the world, the masks that we put on or take off in different circumstances. How do we protect ourselves from others, and how do we draw closer to others? This may take in themes of isolation, connection, compassion and flourishing.

You are invited to submit a piece of creative work plus a 300 word reflection*

Works and reflections that the conference conveners select as particularly pertinent to the themes of the conference will be made available on a shared online platform accessible to all conference delegates. Some will also be selected for physical art display. Three will be nominated for a prize and invited to present at the end of the online conference Sat 11th June.

*You may use any creative medium for your presentation, for example: music, dance, monologue, painting, photography, prose, poetry, sculpture. See https://sites.google.com/view/madhearts2021/home and www.outofourheads.net for examples.

Submit work