What does our mental health look like in 2019?

What kinds of stories should we share?

This week sees the launch of 70 Stories, an online project curated by the Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival to mark the 70th anniversary of the Mental Health Foundation.

Throughout the Foundation’s anniversary year, we will be sharing mental health stories on the SMHAF website at www.mhfestival.com/70stories.

As well as celebrating the Foundation’s anniversary, the project will expand on this year’s festival theme, Connected, throughout the year, creating a compelling group portrait of mental health in 2019 by connecting stories from our Writing Awards, stories from regular and new SMHAF contributors, and more.

Andrew Eaton-Lewis, arts lead for the Mental Health Foundation, said: “One of the most distinctive things about the Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival is the way it combines the best elements of an open access community festival with the best elements of a curated arts festival. It is a festival in which highly experienced and established writers, filmmakers and performers from Scotland and beyond appear alongside people who have never written or performed before, and everybody learns from each other. This year’s festival theme, Connected, was partly inspired by that.

“We want to build on this sense of connectedness with 70 Stories. SMHAF itself may be finishing at the end of May, but 70 Stories will keep the spirit of the festival alive throughout the year. The project will bring together new and established writers, and different forms of writing, to create something that should feel bigger than the sum of all its parts.”

70 Stories can be found at on www.mhfestival.com/70stories – we will also be sharing stories on our Facebook page. 

If you are connected in some way to SMHAF or the Mental Health Foundation and would like to contribute a piece of writing to this project, please contact aeaton-lewis@mentalhealth.org.uk.

The Mental Health Foundation is the UK’s charity for everyone’s mental health. With prevention at the heart of what we do, we aim to find and address the sources of mental health problems so that people and communities can thrive. The Foundation is a UK charity that relies on public donations and grant funding to deliver its work. The Foundation is proud of the vital role it plays in hosting, developing and managing the Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival.