I set up a facebook event for the open call yesterday and when searching for it again later found a page for a film called Dwell Time. I watched the trailer and got in touch with the film director Anak Rabanal suggesting we have a film screening here in the UK. She seems keen! So that’s very exciting. We’re planning an event for World Mental Health Day on 10th October so could tie in a film screening and discussion with that event, or set up another special event. Here is Anak talking about her film for the indiegogo campaign previously run for the film. As shown in the film dwell time is also a military term: In the military, dwell time is the amount of time that service members spend in their home station between deployments to war zones. Dwell time is designed to allow service members a mental and physical break from combat and to give them time with their families. It is an important component of long term military readiness.
I also found that Time For Change has some handy guidelines for blogging about self-harm, suicide, and eating disorders which we will be good to follow as best practice to help safeguard anyone reading our blog and newspaper.
We have also just sent off our first funding application! Fingers crossed!! Our second application for match funding will be going in shortly too.
We’re delighted that Dwell Time has been selected for this year’s Hannah Directory.
Hannah Directory is a print publication, website and launch week of events celebrating the great stuff that people are doing in places in England’s north, and asking how even more of it can happen.
Founded in 2013, the directory takes a snapshot capturing some of the year’s best activity in the arts, music, business, new kinds of social organisation, scientific discovery and great stuff from any field. It is named after and inspired by Hannah Mitchell (1872–1956), a suffragette and rebel who tried to create ‘beauty in civic life’ in her work on public libraries, parks and gardens.
The sixth annual edition of Hannah Directory launches on Monday 4 June 2018.
This week I’ve been compiling a list of local/UK mental health support services and charities that now feature on our blog and will form a directory in the newspaper.
One of the risks of raising awareness about mental health and publishing content that speaks about mental health is it could potentially trigger someone so we want to be able to signpost to relevant support services.
This is not by any means an exhaustive list and feel free to suggest any more:
Addaction https://www.addaction.org.uk
Andy’s Man Club http://andysmanclub.co.uk
Anxiety UK http://www.anxietyuk.org.uk
BEAT https://www.beateatingdisorders.org.uk
Bipolar UK https://www.bipolaruk.org
Campaign Against Living Miserably https://www.thecalmzone.net
Childline https://www.childline.org.uk
FRANK http://www.talktofrank.com
Get Connected http://hatw.co.uk/helpline/get-connected
Heads Together https://www.headstogether.org.uk
HOOT Creative Arts https://www.hootcreativearts.co.uk
Men’s Shed https://menssheds.org.uk
Mental Health First Aid England https://mhfaengland.org
Mental Health Foundation http://www.mentalhealth.org.uk
Mind https://www.mind.org.uk
National Suicide Prevention Alliance http://www.nspa.org.uk
NHS Choices Mental Health Services https://www.nhs.uk/NHSEngland/AboutNHSservices/mental-health-services-explained/Pages/accessing%20services.aspx
No Panic https://www.nopanic.org.uk
OCD UK http://www.ocduk.org
PANDAS http://www.pandasfoundation.org.uk
Prevention of Young Suicide https://www.papyrus-uk.org
PTSD UK http://www.ptsduk.org
Rethink Mental Illness https://www.rethink.org
S2R Create Space https://www.s2r.org.uk
Samaritans https://www.samaritans.org
SANE http://www.sane.org.uk
Scottish Association for Mental Health https://www.samh.org.uk
Support Line: Mental Health http://www.supportline.org.uk/problems/mental_health.php
Young Minds https://youngminds.org.uk
Whilst we have been receiving a steady stream of submissions, many from Curatorspace, which we upload directly to the blog, we have been busy behind the scenes in meetings. These have been planning and funding meetings mainly.
We’re applying for 2 pots of funding that both require 50% match funding. They are both capped at £1000 for and will fund our launch event in Spring 2019 and newspaper printing (fingers crossed!) We are volunteering all our time including running the workshops so we can also use this as in-kind match too.
One of our biggest issues is that our launch event is very much in planning whilst we build relationships with community organisations and develop the programme, but the deadline for one pot of funding is in a few short weeks. So we have to be able to articulate our plans without a confirmed programme in place.
One of the questions we received at Huddersfield Soup – where we presented the project a few weeks ago – was why such a long lead in time to launch the newspaper (essentially in a full year’s time)? Well, as a small team of 3 volunteering our time in between various illnesses, children and life in general we definitely need a lot of time to make something like this work! It’s important to us that we engage with hard to reach groups. We need to set up workshops that engage with marginalised individuals to support them through a creative process. We need to research and develop our ideas with our partner organisations. We need to get funding in place. We need to make it the best we can make it.
It feels like there is a lot to do in what will inevitably become a short space of time, and what keeps me focussed is the whole reason we’re doing this: We lost our friend to bipolar and depression and he wanted us to make an art project to raise awareness all the (too often silent) problems people live with. Our lives are all affected by mental health issues, directly and indirectly through family and friends. We have lost loved ones, we have suffered ourselves. These things are important but they are still, in 2018, still taboo and difficult, made increasingly more difficult by cuts to critical services and general lack of education and support.
Next week is Mental Health Awareness Week so we will be doing some blog posts about the support services available, locally and nationally, with plenty of good things happening.
