The power of art and creativity
Led by our arts team at the Mental Health Foundation, the Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival is one of the world's leading arts events dedicated to mental health. Established in 2007, the annual festival features hundreds of events across all artforms, from theatre, film and music, to visual arts, writing and dance.
By engaging with artists, connecting with communities and forming collaborations, we celebrate the artistic achievements of people with experience of mental health problems. We challenge stigma and encourage participation in the arts to promote good mental health for all.
This year's festival runs from Monday 20 October to Sunday 9 November in one of its most ambitious and far-reaching programmes yet.
Comfort and Disturb
The theme for this year's festival is Comfort and Disturb.
'Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.'
The theme reflects the festival's commitment to confronting stigma and prejudice around mental health while providing a platform for people who have faced sometimes profound mental health challenges to tell their own stories in their own way.
This year, this includes:
- Glasgow-based Arab artist Huss, whose SMHAF commissioned short film, Until We Return, tells his story of being outed and forced into exile from Egypt.
- Australian performer Leah Shelton, whose grandmother was institutionalised in the 1960s, a story she vividly tells in her Mental Health Foundation Fringe Award-winning show Batshit!.
- Irish visual artist Myrid Carten, who turns the camera on the complex and often painful dynamics of her relationship with her alcoholic mother in her debut feature film, A Want In Her.
- Norwegian film director Ane-Martha Tamnes Hansgård, whose battle to separate her identity from her psychiatric symptoms is told in the film DIAGNONSENSE which has its UK premiere as part of the festival.
- Other highlights include Out Of Sight Out Of Mind an annual exhibition at Summerhall in Edinburgh that showcases – and is planned by – people with experience of mental health issues. This year’s show is the biggest yet, with 400 artists represented.
- Are You Sitting Comfortably is a one-day showcase of powerful new theatre works in progress by Emma Lynne Harley, Ese Ighorae, Milly Sweeney and Skye Loneragan. The show touches on issues from institutional racism to coercive control, followed by an evening of candid mental health-themed conversation and music with songwriters Emma Pollock, Jo Mango and Amy Duncan, in partnership with broadcaster Nicola Meighan’s A Kick Up The Arts podcast.
The festival also sees the return of our International Film Awards and SMHAF x WayWORD, a live literary showcase hosted by Jo Gilbert.
The Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival runs from Monday 20 October to Sunday 9 November across Scotland.