Just a few decades ago many people with disabilities or mental health needs were locked away from the rest of Britain in institutions, their voices ignored and their stories unheard. United Response, which is now celebrating 40 years of challenging injustice, want to rectify that.

Postcards from the Edges gives anyone whose life has been impacted by disability or mental health the chance to speak to the world in a postcard – using words, photographs, art or anything that captures the imagination. The website (www.postcardsfromtheedges.org.uk) and hub of the project was launched at the beginning of February.

The postcards website is where all submitted postcards can be viewed and shared. It contains a variety of postcards demonstrating a vast spectrum of creativity; from political statements to doodles.

One postcard submitted was by an 84 year old man with mental health needs. He described it, simply, as capturing ‘what’s in my head’. Asked about its resemblance to the great Italian Lakes, he smiled and confirmed he had been to Lake Maggiore as a young man – this memory still clearly burning bright inside him.

Another postcard entitled ‘See the child’ shows a child having fun at a playground. Liz, the card creator and mother of the child, said she wanted it to show ‘the joy of the moment’. She longs for people to treat children with autism with as much compassion as they would a child with a more visible disability.

Matthew submitted a postcard called ‘Being disabled does not make me inspirational’. He said that he is frustrated by people seeing him doing normal things and finding them inspirational simply because he has a disability and uses a wheelchair.

Later this year, exhibitions in London, Bristol, Newcastle and Liverpool will showcase a selection of the postcards.

United Response is a top 100 national disability, supporting people to fulfil their dreams and to live as independently as possible. This year marks forty years of providing learning disabilities support and championing the rights of people with disabilities.

You can find out more about the project here: http://www.postcardsfromtheedges.org.uk/the-project.

You can get involved in this project simply by creating a postcard. Either request a postcard pack by emailing postcards@unitedresponse.org.uk or go to the http://www.postcardsfromtheedges.org.uk website and click ‘create a card’ to upload or create a card online.

“My name is Susan and I head up the WEGO Health Activist Network – a place where bloggers, tweeters, and facebook leaders come together to share information, learn from one another, and find tools to further their advocacy within the online health community.

As you may know, May is National Mental Health Month and host to Children’s Mental Health Week and WEGO Health is interested in working with Health Activists in this community to help raise awareness and educate our other Health Activists. I’m reaching out to you today to see if you might be interested in getting involved by submitting a guest post or joining our Roundtable discussion to share your story and/or get other Health Activists involved. You can sign up for either or both below.”

Guest Posting: http://info.wegohealth.com/guest-posts
Roundtable discussion: http://info.wegohealth.com/roundtable

Theatre Témoin presents
NINEVEH
directed by Ailin Conant, written by Julia Pascal
at Riverside Studios from 16 April to 11 May (press night: Thursday 18 April at 7.30pm)

“Inspired by the testimonies of international soldiers, Nineveh is a fantastical and inventive physical show that considers what happens when a soldier leaves the war zone. The show was created by award-winning playwright Julia Pascal (Crossing Jerusalem, The Dybbuk) and Ailin Conant (Artistic Director of Theatre Témoin). This theatre experience is made as a result of Conant’s work with ex-fighters, peace activists, ageing veterans and child soldiers in Rwanda, Lebanon, Israel and Kashmir.

Once there was a boy. The war had taken his hands and arms. When he went home, his family didn’t recognise him. “You have no arms”, they said, “you are not our son”. They threw him into the river, where a giant fish swallowed him.

This stunning new play is based on the stories of ex-combatants and child soldiers that Ailin Conant encountered through The Return Project, in which she created theatre with people in four countries over a year. The result is a magical and timeless tale of four ex-soldiers adrift in a mysterious vessel. It explores the relationships between four different men and their attempts to escape their past and present.

Ailin Conant, Theatre Témoin: ‘Some experiences are too enormous to derive meaning from in any rational way. I could spend forever talking about the people and stories I’ve encountered and still fail to communicate the things that were most significant and affecting. For that reason, we create theatre.’

The production has been created with the support of War Child, Amnesty UK, Queen Mary, University of London, and Arts Council England. The Return Project ( http://www.returnproject.blogspot.co.uk ) was supported by Wellesley College and the Mary Elvira Stevens Travelling Fellowship.

Theatre Témoin: the act of witnessing does not exist as a verb in French.
One can only ‘be a witness’ passively: ‘être témoin’. The active verb, ‘témoigner’, means ‘to testify’.

Theatre Témoin is a physical theatre company that creates work that is daring, socially engaged, and fun. It collaborates with people, companies and communities internationally to make high quality theatre that provokes change because it is personal, not because it is didactic.

Theatre Témoin’s most recent show was The Fantasist – ‘an examination of the bipolar state which uses puppetry to seriously good effect’ (Lyn Gardner, The Guardian). The Fantasist received critical acclaim including numerous five star reviews during the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2012, and tours the UK and Ireland in 2013. Further work includes: Nobody’s Home (2010), on post-war trauma and the soldier’s journey home in a modern re-telling of The Odyssey. Jukai (2008), a collaboration with Taiko drummers, on the forest at the base of mount Fuji haunted by its reputation for being the biggest suicide spot in Japan, possibly the world; and Borderline (2008), looking at immigration law and the plight of the ‘sans papiers’ in a satire of French bureaucracy gone wrong.”

Pheonix

Black Star

Summer

Winter

Samsara

Polar Opposites

“‘Christmas Crackers’ is brought to you by the members of Thinkarts.

Our winter exhibition is a platform of over 70 pieces of work both 2d and 3d. All of the work is handmade and a large majority of it will be for sale via CREST Waltham Forest. With Christmas nearing in why not pop along to the see if you can pick up an alternative present and support the members of Thinkarts.

Thinkarts was developed to offer arts-related events, projects and vocational opportunities for people who have experienced mental ill health.

In November 2011, responsibility for Thinkarts was transferred to CREST, a grass-roots community organisation with forty years’ experience of developing local services such as a mental health befriending service.

There is also a free coffee morning in the Gallery most Thursday to find out more about the coffee morning call the BLC directly on 020 8724 8710

If you would like to join the thinkarts mailing list or find out more about what we are doing and how to get involved then please contact Alan Horne
of CREST. alan.horne@crestwf.org.uk”

Exhibition Details:
At The Gallery, Ground Floor, Barking Learning Centre, 2 Town Square, IG11 7NB.
(I’m unsure of opening times, so please call the learning centre)

Link to the Private View (PDF – download invite to print)

For more information check out:
Barking Learning Centre Gallery
www.thinkarts.org

“I am a service user from Accrington, I have been a service user for approximately 2 years after I was forced to leave my employment due to a physical disability. This unfortunately was the trigger for my increasing depression and anxiety.

Over the past 2 years I have been subjected to every kind of therapy I could imagine however the only thing apart from the support of my friends and loved ones that has helped me to manage is my increased love of photography. This started as nothing more than taking a few snaps of my travels whilst working as an international coach driver (the job I was forced to leave) but has grown with me throughout probably what are the darkest moments of my life. My increased passion for this art has shown me that there is a whole new side to me that I never knew existed.

I was never any good at art and to this day I still can’t draw or paint but I have found that with a little help from a magical box, I too can create beautiful images. I now look at art in a completely new light an with a new found understanding. It has brought me a whole new circle of friends and companions who I can share new experiences with, and slowly I am starting to enjoy my new self and to believe that I have a purpose and an identity again. I have also been fortunate enough to use my new-found skills to help others in similar situations to myself, as well as being featured in a couple of exhibitions and local arts and heritage projects.

I continue to recieve support for my mental health issues through Hyndburn community restart but I feel that there is now a light at the end of the tunnel (albeit quite a way off yet).

It’s World Mental Health Day, a day celebrated to raise awareness to end the stigma of mental health disorders and difficulties. On a day like today, I don’t want to spaff on about campaigns and statistics or what WMHD means to me. I’m going to use it as a means to tag this post, so people can find this blog, and find all the wonderful art in its pages, created by people who all use mental health services. I’m also a mental health service user, and an artist, but I get plenty of exposure for my art. Instead I want to talk about art and artists I like, in particular, Adolf Wölfi.

I love outsider art. It’s my favourite thing, along with folk art. Adolf Wölfli was an outsider artist associated with the Art Brut movement. He came from Bern, Switzerland. He was treated badly in his very young years, being both physically and sexually abused. He was an orphan and he got pushed from one foster home to another. Not an easy life, and it had hardly even started.

Wölfli didn’t start to draw until his admission to the Waldau Clinic, Bern, in 1895. He had been a farm labourer, and was briefly in the army, before his admission TO Waldau, however he had also been convicted of attempted child molestation and also spent some time serving a prison sentence. After his release he was picked up again for a similar offence. It was at this point he was admitted to the asylum where he would spend the rest of his adult life.

This is when he began to draw. This is when Adolf Wölfli came to life. I want to focus on his art, not his admission to Waldau, or his jail time. If you want to read more about that, check out his Wiki page, and, if you can get your hands on a copy, the book published by one of the doctors at Waldau, ‘Ein Geisteskranker als Künstler (A Psychiatric Patient as Artist)’.

Wölfli produced a massive body of work over the course of his life in residence at the asylum. Here is some of that work, and I encourage you to buy this:

“WEGO Health is a different kind of social network, built from the ground up for the community leaders, bloggers and tweeters who are actively involved in health online. WEGO Health is a platform for committed health advocates to foster new relationships, gain access to helpful resources, and to grow their communities. And it’s free.”

I received an email from WEGO this week, and while I am not sure if I will be taking part in the panel, felt it was appropriate to share with you all as I know a lot of bloggers, specifically mental health writers, read this blog. Check out the email below:

Mental Health Activists Speak Up!

As part of our ongoing mission to empower Health Activists, WEGO Health will be holding a series of panels for bloggers, tweeters, and other online leaders interested in Mental Health and we’d love to have you join us to share your story and your opinions!

To join us, fill out our quick survey here:  Mental Health Panel

Can’t make it? Like us on Facebook to follow along with all of the great health-related programs we offer!

If this Roundtable isn’t the best fit for you but you’re interested in attending others in the future, tell us which health conditions you discuss most often: Health Topics.