Friday 10 June / In-person /Pay What You Can
Saturday 11 June / Online / Free (Donations Welcome)
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 of 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 Inobservable Worlds” by acclaimed arts Dolly Sen
- Maria Grazia Turri on a 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
Thanks to our funders: Arts and Culture, Centre for History of the Emotions, Drama Department and Wolfson Institute of Population Health, Diversity and Inclusion at Queen Mary.
Contribute
Mad Hearts is inviting contributions on the theme of Masked/Unmasked – whether thinking of physical masks and the pandemic, or the metaphorical 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 a 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.
Organisers: Maria Grazia Turri, Bridget Escolme, Louise Younie, Sumita Majumdar and Rupert Dannreuther.
The event is organised by the MSc Creative Arts and Mental Health
Image: Breaking Free from the Chains of Expectations by Natasha Alia Razman
