Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival

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It Will Take All of Us

Lilith (Lea) Cooper

In the centre of the poster is a hand written large block text in black which reads ‘No One Way Works’. This quote is continued turning around the outside edges of the page, reading ‘It will take all of us shoving at the thing from all sides to bring it down - Diane di Prima.’ Around the central text is a border of 16 illustrations, which have a thin black outline, and are shaded in three shades of bright red. The illustrations are of: a razer blade; a bunch of Rosemary; a vial (like you would use for Oestrogen); a knotted rope; a pair of scissors; a crowbar; a wheatpaste brush; a balaclava; three round pills with smiley faces on; a spray paint can; a needle; a packet of prescription medications; bolt cutters;a lighter; a dildo; and a brick.

This is a quote from Diane Di Prima’s Revolutionary Letters.

I got a badge with this quote on from Cherry Styles at SW Press during Covid.

In particular, it has been important to me to consider self-harm as an act of resistance, to think about all the different things we do to resist, to ‘shove at the thing’.

Download and print your own

An Archive of Propaganda from a Mad People’s Uprising

This artwork is part of Lilith (Lea) Cooper’s imagined fictional archive of downloadable posters from The Mad People’s Uprising of 2033, commissioned for SMHAF 2023.

It asks what a Mad revolution might look like, creating a space to imagine beyond the present day, and locating today’s Mad, survivor and mental health activism in a longer genealogy.

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