Colleen Altagracia and Carolyn Milbank update us on their RETHiNK project to destigmatise mental ‘illness’
Back in May we were awarded a RETHiNK Grant from Mind and Body Consultants and Like Minds, Like Mine for our What’s On Your Plate project. It is 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?’ This 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 ‘what’s on your plate’ question in any format so long as they were hand-scribed, because we like the added textures of different papers and handwriting styles. Responses could be words or images, a list, a paragraph, a poem or a sentence – really, anything. 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 that 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 can hold against themselves when they are diagnosed or experiencing difficulties; unfortunately in this day and age we are not often asked what is affecting our mental health and this project wants to counter-act that and get people talking. When members of the public read the stories in the final exhibition, we hope they develop more understanding for mental health difficulties and people who experience them.
It hasn’t been an easy road, but we’ve had a great time. We have always preferred to leave the end-product up in the air for as long as possible, so that it can be driven by the responses given by participants. We want to be led by what they send us. 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. We will decide upon the final artwork once we have collected all of the responses to our question “What’s on your plate?”
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 yet. We are always so grateful to people for taking the time to reflect upon our question and provide us with raw content for our art-works. We try to let people know that we always treat participant responses with integrity and respect, to help them feel safer about taking part.
We have now met with several community mental health centres and groups, and the final responses are flying in from all quarters. We expect that the final installation format will be set in the next few weeks and will report back as soon as it does.
