Start Date
End Date
Where
The Kiln Cinema and The Crown Hotel
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As many Londoners, and people around the world, struggle to readjust to life in the wake of the Covid lockdown, a new festival looks set to re-energise the capital in an open-minded conversation about mental health, all through the prism of film and the creative arts.
SHOUT LONDON: The Ashford Place Mental Health Film and Arts Festival sprouted from an idea by Carey Fitzgerald, Managing Director of Silver Mountain Productions, whose long-standing involvement with Ashford Place motivated her to explore ways of combining her own industry expertise with the charity’s pioneering work supporting the most marginalised and vulnerable in society.
Ashford Place CEO, Danny Maher, who has worked closely with Fitzgerald in developing SHOUT LONDON, highlights the timeliness of an event that seeks to bring unseen and often poorly understood mental health issues into more open discourse, saying:
‘The Covid lockdown has had a significantly negative impact on public mental health and the ability of services to cope, with reduced face to face engagement against a stretched system exposing existing and growing inequalities.’ He continues: ‘As thinking and policy around wellbeing continues to be locked in a top-down infrastructure, Ashford Place is incredibly proud to support SHOUT LONDON, which looks towards redressing the balance, offering a platform that encourages publicly focused conversation, inspired by honest depictions of mental health in film and the creative arts’.
Encompassing film, music, theatre, dance and poetry, SHOUT LONDON is being curated by Silver Mountain Productions, who, along with The Kiln, also act as sponsors with Carey Fitzgerald as Festival Director, Ronald de Neef as Programme Director and Dominique Murphy-de Neef as Marketing Director.
In the meantime, Michelle Collins, star of stage and screen, is announced as festival patron.
‘I am proud to be the Patron of Shout London - every family is affected by mental health of some kind and I’m delighted that Shout London is opening the conversation, as too often the subject is hidden. The Festival will celebrate the importance of the creative arts and mental health wellbeing’.
Looking further ahead, Carey Fitzgerald is excited for the future:
‘Our long-term plan is to build SHOUT LONDON into one of the most diverse cultural annual events in the calendar, embracing an inclusive spectrum across all the arts. By engaging with communities and forming collaborations, the festival aims to celebrate the artistic expression of people with experience of mental health problems, exploring the relationship between creativity and the mind, while promoting positive mental health and well-being.’
Showcasing at The Kiln Cinema in Kilburn and at The Crown Hotel London, the free to attend inaugural edition of SHOUT LONDON: The Ashford Place Mental Health Film and Arts Festival will be held on 10 and 11 October to coincide with World Mental Health Day.