Mental Health on a Plate

Back in May we were awarded a RETHiNK Grant from Like Minds, Like Mine and Mind and Body Consultants for our What’s On Your Plate project. It’s now August and we have been running around Auckland city for the past two months, asking community members far and wide, “What’s on your plate?”

The final responses are flying in from all quarters. So far all we have told anyone is that the responses will be worked into an installation, which may involve the use of plates and other items of Kiwiana.

The final artwork will be driven by what we get after all the responses are collected.

Why this question?
It is all in honour of our latest ‘respond-response’ community arts project RETHiNK: What’s On Your Plate, which aims to reduce mental ‘illness’ related stigma and discrimination in Auckland. 

We sought responses to the question in any format, so long as they were hand-scribed. We did this because we liked the added textures of different papers and the uniqueness of the individual’s handwriting style. Reponses could be words or images, a list, a paragraph, a poem, a sentence or anything the mind could imagine. The intention was to leave the mode of responding as wide open as possible, to allow for a greater variety of responses and more interesting material.

It is our hope participants will find a sense of achievement, belonging and confidence through the act of sharing. The sharing and reading of personal stories may also work to address some of the self-stigma that people experience when they are diagnosed or experiencing difficulties.

We are not often asked what is affecting our mental health and this project wants to counteract that and get people talking. When members of the public read the stories in the final exhibition, we hope they will develop more understanding for mental health difficulties and people who experience them. 

It’s a big thing to ask someone to trust you with their private thoughts, especially when you can’t tell them exactly how those thoughts will be presented to the public.

We are always so grateful to people for taking the time to reflect upon our question and provide us with raw content for our artworks. We try to let people know we always treat responses with integrity and respect, to help them feel safer about taking part. 
 

Auckland artists Colleen Altagracia and Carolyn Milbank, Guest Bloggers