Throughout your life, you are developing your thoughts regarding the arts and mental health?
In 2016, we lost a second sister to suicide, Anita, who was 51, had a good job at Grafton Recruitment, she had 3 beautiful adult children and a good marriage, but she was going through menopause, experiencing empty nest syndrome and her sense of self-worth had been eroded. At the same time, I had my own health issues to deal with along with the deteriorating health of my parents.
These were very difficult times and needless to say that for quite some time I was trying to look after my own mental health and that of my immediate family and my extended family.
I realised, even more clearly, during Lockdown that it was my own creativity and the creativity of others which helped through the most difficult times.
When did you get involved with the Northern Ireland Mental Health Arts Festival?
I started to become involved a couple of years ago, during Lockdown. I was involved with cultural programming and I worked on a series of podcasts talking with artists about mental health. I remember getting a grant for £200 for Culture Night, the first Culture Night of Lockdown, in Enniskillen. I organised a videographer to go to the Butter Market with two friends, Anne McNulty and Ken Ramsey, who are married, again to discuss the situation with people’s mental health, but particularly the artists and the creatives.
Now, I had been involved in a lot of cultural institutions; I was on the board of the Arts Council for 8 years, I worked on the City of Culture campaign, I programmed festivals. I wasn’t living in a wee cocoon all by myself in Fermanagh. I had made lots of connections and I had connections both North and South. I also taught art in a male prison and that was an incredible experience which added to my thoughts about the transformative power of the arts.
I had gone back to painting after we lost our first sister. That was my form of self-expression and self-healing. I had my own exhibitions as an artist. The question of the arts sustaining mental health was as much part of my own process as it was thinking about how it might help other people.
If you pull everything together, art, creativity, self-expression, community and strong friendship networks, they all aid in maintaining good mental health.
