Art saved my life, can it save yours?
Labelled as the suicide capital of England and Wales, where one person is dying every fortnight, St Helens needs some love, it needs some Madlove…
For the month of November 2019 I’m combining my own utopian mental health design project, Madlove with local St Helens arts organisation Heart of Glass’ annual festival, Take Over. We’re creating a Madlove Take Over!
I’ve co-curated a programme of amazing local, national and international artists to work with local people who are struggling with their mental health.
We’re building a Madlove Take Over space in the old Argos store, creating a colourful, exciting and welcoming space for tea, chats and moments to relax as well as events, performances and exhibitions.
I hope we can provide somewhere for people to go to try and re-build that sense of community that has been lost. Local people can also use the space to organise their own activities, everything will be free and everyone will be welcome, including therapy dogs obvs.
Many of the artists invited have experience of their own mental health struggles and having all of my favourite mad artists in the same space will be bonkers!
The line up includes Hana Madness with Change Grow Live (CGL) | Kim Noble, Hwa Young Jung with communities of St Helens | Touretteshero | Yara El-Sherbini and Davina Drummond (Yara and Davina) with communities of Clock Face | Lois Weaver with St Helens U3A | Dolly Sen | Cathy Cross | Rory Pilgrim | Joanne Lyne, Angela Samata and Lisa Vint with Mark Storor | Kitty O’Shea.
The space is also open to local community groups for a full range of activities.
Co-curated by Emily Gee with Mary Osborn. Madlove space co-design Sascha Gilmour.
Produced by Heart of Glass. The space hosted throughout, lead by Fox Irving, and a team of awesome local people.