At the Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival, we are very concerned that CAPS Advocacy’s Arts as Advocacy programme remains under threat, due to the proposal to withdraw funding by Edinburgh Health and Social Care Partnership (EHSP). This includes the annual Out of Sight, Out of Mind exhibition, a vital part of our programme.

Ever since it began in 2013, the exhibition has supported, championed and empowered hundreds of artists — many of whom have gone through very challenging experiences — to make and exhibit powerful work about mental health.

As one participant expressed in an article for the Mental Health Foundation:

This is a place where someone who feels as inconsequential as me can have an impact.

It is hard to imagine another event that so effectively captures what we aim to do as a festival – through sharing beautiful artworks, important mental health content and stories that inspire, uplift, and challenge us. Out of Sight Out of Mind powerfully aligns with our mission to promote mental health awareness and inclusivity.

A truly extraordinary and unique thing: Scotland’s largest mental health art exhibition

This August, Summerhall and the whole of Edinburgh, buzzes with artists and arts lovers from around the world who have descended on the city for one of the largest and most lucrative arts festival in the world. For vulnerable local residents, however, the festival this month draws into stark contrast the inequality faced by local artists with mental health difficulties, who face the defunding of their yearly exhibition Out of Sight Out of Mind (OOSOOM) at Summerhall.

It has run for 13 years on the principle of lifting up marginalised voices in Edinburgh and is now Scotland’s largest mental health art exhibition. This year will be the biggest yet with more than 400 people with mental health issues showing artworks, and as usual it expects to draw 2,000 visitors this October.

Unfortunately, this year may also be the last. The exhibition, now in its 13th year, has been threatened with closure by Edinburgh Health and Social Care Partnership (EHSP) who are proposing to withdraw the exhibition’s funding in an effort to cut costs, along with other community mental health services in the city.   

The exhibition is a truly extraordinary and unique thing. It features artworks of all different shapes and sizes, colours and textures. From tiny watercolours to huge sculptures, from textiles and tapestry to film or poetry. It presents a wide variety of themes, including mental health diagnosis (depression, anxiety, alcohol dependency, eating disorders, borderline personality disorder, suicidal ideation etc), personal stories, societal concerns and many others. Some artworks are hard hitting; however, they are also often beautiful, joyous and funny. Each October, when hundreds of such artworks and voices come together, a thought-provoking space is created for the audience. 

But the subject matter and diversity of the art works on show is just the start. The ethos of the exhibition and what it means to people with mental health issues is equally important. As the Planning Group say: 

We ensure that our group and the exhibition are welcoming, non-hierarchical, accessible, supportive and fair. Our exhibition is free of art jargon, our application process is simple, we offer support, we offer art materials grants, we aim to meet exhibitors’ requests, to meet accessibility needs where we can, participation is not dependent on art experience, and we are not concerned about perceptions of artistic quality. 

We produce an exhibition of the highest professional standard that we can. We carry forward 12 years of experience, we visit other exhibitions to learn more, we spend a year planning, months curating, weeks installing and invigilating. The love, care and professionalism we give is shown in the feedback from the community.

Participant Testimonies

The heartfelt pleas from exhibitors to EHSP demonstrate the enormous value of the exhibition to those who take part and its unique role in people’s recovery:  

This exhibition doesn’t just support artists — it saves lives. It saved mine.

This exhibition gives me a voice in a world where I often feel voiceless. It’s not just about creating or showing work — it’s about being heard. OOSOOM gives space to the kind of expression that can’t be forced into neat sentences or diagnoses. Here, I don’t need to explain myself in ways I can’t. Through art, I speak. Through this exhibition, I am understood. 

Without it, I spiral — into silence, into isolation. Art is my connection to the world. OOSOOM is the only place where that connection feels safe, supported, celebrated. In this space, I’m not just tolerated — I belong. 

It’s a window into lived experiences that are often overlooked or unheard, but that matter. Experiences that hold value, beauty, insight, and truth — and speak to the universal human need to connect and be seen. 

Nowhere else have I found a community like this. Nowhere else have I felt so wholly accepted. Here, I have friends. A mad, loving family.’ 

Partner Testimonies

The exhibition leads to improved mental wellbeing and often leads to people volunteering, studying, and working. It gives professional arts support, which ensures people have the best chance of their expressions being heard and seen. It is accessible and removes barriers to participation in the arts. The exhibition highlights issues that people with mental health issues face which improves understanding within communities, across sectors and within the public realm.  

Museums Galleries Scotland said: 

Out of Sight Out of Mind is a hugely valuable and rare project which centres people with lived experience of marginalisation and allows them to tell their stories and communicate the truth of their lives. In museums and galleries there is a growing recognition that the organisations are not doing enough to provide accessible and inclusive experiences for disabled people. There is low representation in the workforce and even lower in positions of management and leadership. Disabled people are a valuable part of society, museums and galleries should represent their lives and histories. The work of Out of Sight Out of Mind team is an exceptional example of creating a truly accessible space and experience. They have a lot to share with the museum sector and it would be a huge loss to lose this vital work and project.  

Edinburgh charity CAPS Independent Advocacy supports the Planning Group to deliver the exhibition. Pam van de Brug, Arts as Advocacy Manager at CAPS said: 

Out of Sight Out of Mind exhibition is unique and is so important to people. People with mental health issues can struggle to be heard. They can have multiple barriers to participation in the arts, as well as other areas of society. The principles of ‘independent collective advocacy’ which underpin Out of Sight Out of Mind ensure that, at this exhibition at least, they are the most important voices in the room, and at the planning table. I think the exhibition itself sends a wider message that everyone matters, and that all deserve to be heard and to participate.  

Over the past 13 years I have seen more then 2000 people with mental health issues take part and benefit in ways that are impossible to fully quantify. The threat of cuts to other CAPS projects and other mental health services in the community are already affecting people that we work with. Many face losing multiple services which assist with better mental health or help maintain wellness. Many services are often already under funded as the number of people with mental ill heath increases and the current threat of cuts has seen an increase in burdens all round. For many of us workers in the mental health sector, our commitment has deepened, and we are working hard to try and save our services.

Jane Crawford, CEO of CAPS said:

I urge the EHSP to listen to what people are saying and to not make a hasty decision in August on the decommissioning of Out of Sight Out of Mind and the other CAPS Thrive projects without a more thorough examination.

Call for Support

Now, in the UK, already vulnerable communities are under threat from a rising tide of misinformation, violence and stigma politically and socially, as well as struggling to seek support from mental health services which are over capacity and underfunded. In this context, removing one of the few truly inclusive spaces for people with mental health difficulties to use art to educate, share, expose and heal seems not only short sighted in regard to the impact this could have on those involved, but to the Edinburgh community who attend the exhibition in droves. Low-cost, high impact arts projects like this, which operate under the principles of real inclusion, access and radical expression on which the Fringe Festival was founded, provide real community and opportunity for vulnerable communities in Edinburgh, while widening inequalities and access issues make the Fringe more and more inaccessible to its most vulnerable residents.

Hearing the news that the EHSCP/EIJB intend to abandon this project, while Planning Group members and contributing artists from Edinburgh literally live in the shadow of the spectacle of the Fringe, casts into sharp light the inequalities faced by vulnerable artists in Edinburgh compared to those currently participating in the Edinburgh Fringe. Can the City of Edinburgh truly consider itself the beacon of artistic inclusion and excellence the Fringe and the city claims, when it is unable to support its own most vulnerable residents to create and express and share their own art?

For more information, quotes, high-resolution images and to arrange interviews contact Jane Crawford, CEO at CAPS, at jane@capsadvocacy.org.

Read more about the campaign to prevent the cuts to Arts as Advocacy and other important CAPS’ projects in Edinburgh here.