Polly Trope

'Mr. Fox's Night Out' animation film

'Mr. Fox's Night Out' is the animation short created by south London animators, musicians and scriptwriters.

Successfully shown at the Wimbledon Film Festival, the film is a triumph of collaboration by a team of creative people who happen to come from backgrounds of mental illness.

2013 Review of the Year

It has been a momentous year for JVT.  The first showing of an original animation short film at an international festival.  The creation of an original music soundtrack and a fresh round of music production and animation workshops.  'Mister Fox's Night Out'

The best part of 2013 is that all this original art work - animation, soundtrack, scriptwriting was the outcome of teamwork by of people who often are not given the chance to participate in creative projects of any kind.  The reason?  Due to the stigma that still surrounds the whole vexed area of mental health conditions.

Let's try and unpack this a bit.  The word 'stigma' is bandied around a great deal when it comes to questions of mental health.  It has become a bit of a buzzword, an unexamined concept in many ways.

Is there really a stigma around mental ill-health? Is there really anything preventing anyone regardless of their mental health, from doing anything he or she might wish to do in mainstream society?

In some ways there is no such thing as stigma.  Most mainstream venues are open for anyone to use, whether they happen to be service providers, community groups or commercial organisations.

I don't see art galleries, music studios, libraries, shops actively discrimating against people with mental health conditions.  Also, these providers are legally bound under equality administration as well as their own policies and insurance agreements, to provide equal access to all consumers of their services.

Undoubtedly, there is discrimination by some employers and stigma unfortunately still exists in the job market.

There is also what might be called a 'sideways' stigma that comes from unlikely areas, even from health services that can be closely involved with mental health recovery.

For example, it is still quite common for arts projects involving people with mental health conditions to be identified as or sourced from therapies.  Nothing wrong with therapies but the approach can still tie individuals down to their diagnoses.

A therapy, arts or otherwise, addresses a care need that is related to a clinical condition.  It does not directly address an aspirational need nor does it address individuals' goals, hopes and dreams.  That does not mean to say that therapies do not enable people to make progress in their recovery pathways.  They can often be crucial.

However, it is only when individuals can be signposted to mainstream areas matched to their stated and chosen goals and interests that substantial self and group development takes place.

Access to mainstream has been part of the philosophy of health recovery and social inclusion for the best part of thirty years.  In terms of social inclusion it goes back to the civil rights movement and even further.

I applaud the makers and collaborators of 'Mister Fox's Night Out' for their bold venture into the world of mainstream creative arts.

Polly Trope 'Cured Meat' book and film launch

Bob Dylan's 'Shelter from the Storm'

Mister Fox's Night Out - the complete short movie

Mister Fox's Night Out - the complete short movie with original animation and soundtrack music.

Mister Fox's Night Out film screening

'Legenderry Sky' new video

Asylum from the madness trailer

Umbrella Infographics

umbrella promotes the projects infographic

'Beautiful Relics' trailer out now!

Why mainstream is a 'must' for mental health and social inclusion

Current initiatives around mental health focus on three key areas of support, anti-stigma and therapy. A fourth area 'recovery' is also an important part of the debate.

'Recovery' is controversial and misunderstood.  Recovery can be associated with 'cure' and the concept of a 'cure' in mental ill-health is not always helpful.  That is not to say that people with mental health conditions never talk of being cured or completely recovered.  Some do.

The predominant experience of living with a long-term mental health condition is one of managing symptoms and maintaining a life.

So recovery becomes a form of health management that allows for hopes, dreams and aspirations to develop and continue according to an individual's wishes and choices.

Thinking around recovery is intimately linked with ideas and concepts of social inclusion.  These ideas go back a long way.  They have their roots in the civil rights movement.  Activist Rosa Parkes' refusal to vacate a bus seat reserved for whites in Alabama Mississippi in 1955 marks a crucial moment in the history of social inclusion.  In some ways it changed everything.

As recently as the early 2000s social inclusion formed a major part of UK government thinking.  It was developed under the (then) office of the deputy prime minister and had a strong impact on policy and funding streams.

Along with recovery and social inclusion is a third term - 'mainstream'.

Mainstream is a key part of social inclusion and recovery because it is in the mainstream world that someone with a mental health condition is required to live, just as we all are.

With the knowledge that 'recovery takes place regardless of symptoms or problems' (New Horizons 2008), individuals with mental health diagnoses have the right to access mainstream areas without prejudice.  Someone with a mental health condition has dreams, hopes, aspirations and goals and it is only in the mainstream world where these have a chance of realisation.

In line with this thinking and policy-making, a whole body of materials was created in the early 2000s to help organisations make mainstream social inclusion possible.  By the mid-2000s third sector organisation working in mental health were often more likely to receive commissions and funding the more they could show a commitment to promoting mainstream.

The old way of thinking that limited people with long-term conditions to handouts, clinical settings, day centres and drop-ins was fast being re-shaped and re-made.

Mainstream recovery approaches are fast disappearing under the tide of cuts to funding and changes in commissioning.  It is an initiative in danger of being consigned to the category of yet another transitory trend in mental health and social inclusion.  This is despite the fact that referral to mainstream is highly cost-effective and has a deep impact on the lives of individuals.

Social Inclusion in south London

Astrophysicist and the Law of Attraction

NENE Clinical Commissioning film

NENE (Northants NHS Clinical Commissioning) has produced a short film about personal budgets for mental health clients.

The film shows NHS professionals and service users delineating the benefits of a direct payments approach that encourages individual choice and development.

The professionals also testify to the cost savings that arise from clients needing less and less support from more dependency-based services.

Highly recommended.
NENE personal budgets film

Dylan Tighe (from Breaking Tunes)

Dylan released his debut album RECORD produced by Jimmy Eadie (Jape, We Cut Corners, David Kitt) in May 2012 and launched himself onto the music scene with a series of 10 performances at the Cork Midsummer Festival. This unique live-show featuring actors and musicians received rave reviews and went on to tour to the Dublin Theatre Festival in October.

According to The Examiner "the pick of this bunch of new releases is theatre-maker Dylan Tighe’s debut Record, an album snatched from the swirling waters of mental illness. Launched with a theatre production of the same name as part of Cork Midsummer Festival, it opens the listener to an immediate and raw internal world. "You don’t know what I’ve suffered, you don’t know what I’ve seen," Tighe tells us in ‘Opus.’

In a time when the reality of mental illness is more and more in the public consciousness, Tighe’s album makes for enlightening listening. Opening with a grimly ironic drum roll, the first track is named after Lamotrigine, a so-called ‘mood-stabiliser’ anti-convulsant used to medicate bi-polar depressives.

"To give the mind to chemistry, to numb it to the truth, hurts more than the bitter feeling that joy is but a fluke," sings Tighe. "Mouth as dry as chalk, I read the list of side-effects, convinced I have them all."

No doubt, the album is dark. However, producer Jimmy Eadie — who has previously worked with Jape and Si Schroeder — brings an edgy groove and broad electronic palette to the mix. This, coupled with great performances from Tighe himself on vocals and guitar, as well as from Seán Mac Erlaine on horns and woodwinds and Conor Murray on drums, ensures that Record makes for riveting listening"

Dylan's recent gig as part of the Hard Working Class Heroes Festival was voted by State.ie as one of the top 25 gigs of the entire 3 day festival. The review went on to say:

"By far one of the most intriguing performers at this year’s festival, Tighe performs an absolutely show-stopping set to a packed and somewhat unguarded audience. His soul-searching lyrics and voice combine to staggering effect and he delivers one of the performances of the weekend when clearly very few knew what to expect.

As the pre-gig din loses its viscosity Tighe’s voice is as hushed as it is strong and before long the place is enthralled by him. His running musical theme is mental illness and rather than it become something best examined as shorn memories.

Tighe is examining it through music and generates atmosphere with minimal effort. As such, his lyrics are sometimes unsettling but never anything less than remarkable. As far as comparisons go, a stripped back and darker Edwin Collins would be a start, likewise Richard Hawley, but Dylan Tighe should be heard and experienced with an open mind because based on this, the element of surprise is one of his best weapons"

RECORD is a collection of songs that fuses indelible melodies and philosophical lyrics with a voice of timeless power. The songs, delivered with radical honesty, spring from Dylan’s personal history of mental health diagnoses, treatment and experience, and examine the impact of depression on life and love.

Fusing melancholic vocal lines with a richly layered sound-world of Hammond organs, stylophones, guitars, synths, samples, clarinets and brass, the 10 tracks of RECORD are intimate snapshots of a past filtered through emotional distress, medication, and a search for meaning.

The 10 songs of RECORD transform doomed love, mental torment, failure and disappointment into hymns to comfort the soul. A special limited edition vinyl was also released to coincide with the cycle of gigs at the Dublin Theatre Festival in October.

'Reveal' song by Ellie 'Crying Eyes'

Bowie & Lennox 'Under Pressure'

Disabled man abandoned on the second floor of building during Atos fire alarm evacuation

From The Independent SARAH CASSIDY 

A disabled man was trapped in a centre run by Atos, which assesses fitness for work, when the fire alarm went off and staff evacuated the building, leaving him behind in his wheelchair.

Geoff Meeghan, 32, who has early-onset Parkinson’s and is unable to walk more than three metres without support, was being assessed on the second floor of a building in Neasden, north-west London.

Disabled people arriving for appointments are supposed to be asked if they can exit the building without assistance, but Mr Meeghan, pictured, was not. He waited with his support worker Nick Ephgrave, from the charity Parkinson’s UK, and his sister, who acts as one of his carers, before being called in for his assessment. A few minutes in, the alarm sounded and the doctor present said they needed to evacuate.

“The doctor held the door open for us to come out but then ran down the stairs and left us there,” Mr Meeghan said. “We weren’t allowed to use the lift and asked a security guard for help – he said he’d send some but no one came. Eventually another security guard came past and stayed with us, even though he had been told to evacuate.

“Even though I can tackle stairs with help, it was a highly stressful situation and I felt like it was far too risky. I was worried that flames might come up the stairs and that I might fall or something. It wasn’t a drill. We could see the fire engine arriving outside. I feel like there was a general lack of respect for disabled people at Atos – they make you feel as though you’ve done something wrong by being disabled – like you’re being persecuted.”

An Atos spokesperson said: “This should never have happened and we apologise unreservedly. We will be getting in contact with Mr Meeghan directly. We have since reviewed this case internally with the building security and management team to ensure this doesn’t happen again.”