Comfort & Disturb

Explore commissioned artworks from the Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival 2025 by Erin McGrath, Robyn Woolston and Rylan Gleave.

Our theme of Comfort & Disturb references the famous Cesar A Cruz quote about art as activism, the idea that “art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable”. It is a simple expression of the power of art both to challenge and to console, often having a transformative effect on people and societies.

Colourful textured print of a brain scan in yellow, pink and black.

Swell by Robyn Woolston

A film made by Robyn Woolston in the months following a brain tumour diagnosis, exploring how medical practice, entanglement and trauma intersect when confronting life-changing events.

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SISTOR by Rylan Gleave

Award-winning composer Rylan Gleave was commissioned to produce a new audio work using the broken and detuned sounds of a 1960s Gemini transistor organ, which mirrors the artist’s own life experiences with disabilities, neurodivergence, and mental ill-health, through a trans and queer lens.

Listen

Erin McGrath

This comic by Erin McGrath explores her experience of new motherhood, post-natal depression and care giving, using notes and sketches she made in the year after giving birth.

Read

Performing Anxiety

Performing Anxiety is a new resource for people who want to make audience-facing or participatory arts projects about mental health.

It draws on interviews with over 30 people – writers, performers, directors, producers and programmers – across the UK, many of whom have done pioneering work in this field in recent years.

Explore the resource

Listen to the Podcast

Download the PDF