In honour of Mental Health Week 2012, the Canadian Mental Health Association, Ottawa Branch, and Ottawa Salus are hosting an Arts Café, on Thursday, May 10, 4–6pm, at Ottawa City Hall, Jean Piggott Hall. The event is free and all are welcome.
As per the association’s press release and media coverage, there will be musicians, poets, story-tellers, photographers and visual artists who have a personal experience of mental illness. Passages,
a photovoice exhibit, features photos and narratives by seven photographers
who live in supportive housing who explored such themes as home,
journeys, self-identity and mental illness.
Moods Expressed is an
arts group that focuses on finding exhibitions and venues as well as
publishing and selling opportunities for practising artists living with
mental illness. It is open to anyone who self-identifies as a practising
artist in any discipline who is living with mental illness.
Bev Cummings, poet and author of A Good
Death; Curtis Shaw, origami artist; and Christine Gagné, vocational
support specialist at the Canadian Mental Health Association.
I was really caught off guard by the Moods Expressed website, moodsexpressed.com. Before reading the description, I read the URL and thought, that’s really cool: mood sex pressed.
But mental health is no laughing matter, just as it isn’t the end of life. And these artists are perfect examples that you can live with a mental health illness and still lead a productive and happy life.
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