Publication

Part of the ‘It’s my life don’t you forget it’ project at Open School East

2023/24

Full details of the project can be found here.

As a testimony to the process and delivery of the workshops, a publication was produced, which can be downloaded here.

The publication was made available to all stakeholders of the project and was shared with participants from The Beacon at a hosted event to mark the ending of the project.

Project Summary

It’s My Life, Don’t You Forget is a 10 part, process-driven project developed in collaboration with the invited Lead Artist of the Associates Programme 2023-24, the vacuum cleaner, the OSE Associate Cohort 23-24 and the community at The Beacon, a NHS mental healthcare space in Ramsgate, Kent.

The Associates will deliver a programme of 10 workshops at the Beacon between January – April 2024 that foreground outpatient and staff members needs and creative ideas, and utilise each Associate’s artistic practice and specialist skills, that includes poetry, performance, audio and video production, animation, painting and textiles. Each workshop will create a space in which participants can platform and share their own experiences and advocate for their needs.

The programme will be guided by internationally recognised artist and disability advocate James Leadbitter (working under the name ‘the vacuum cleaner’).

Through an engaging and varied programme, It’s My Life, Don’t You Forget will improve the quality of life for Beacon outpatients, trial partnerships with cultural partners to benefit mental health in Thanet, and prepare a new wave of early-career artists to work in ways that can support mental health (and mental health care provision settings), centring lived experience and the interests of the patient.