A powerful digital media program connecting professional artists with youth experiencing mental health challenges.
In partnership with Art Forms Youth Art Studio and Good Shepherd’s Notre Dame House, Centre[4]Arts launched On The Record, a digital media program that connected artists with youth who had lived with mental health challenges in a collaborative setting to create a storytelling video and interactive exhibition.
Over eight weeks, eight youth aged 15 to 18 with lived experience of mental health hurdles worked with digital artists Jennifer LaFontaine and Emmy Pantin to create their own narrative of their life in the format of a digital story. Participants shared their personal history of growth, resilience, and finding independence whilst battling mental illnesses.
An open discussion was held between the artists and participants to identify concepts and themes that related to their unique lived experiences as young people enduring mental illness, such as institutional experiences like schools and hospitals, homelessness, joblessness, issues with the police, language, empowerment, and shared community. In workshops, participants worked with the artists to record and tell their stories.
Following this, participants worked with artists to craft a script that would be used in their digital story. The next step to gather any photos, personal art, video, and sound clips to be used in their video. The final step in the program was video editing, where participants had the opportunity to learn editing and sound work, and realize the creation of their 2-5-minute personal digital story.
Once the stories were complete, Centre[3] presented an interactive exhibition of On The Record titled Mentalmorphosis at ArtForm’s gallery, using sensor technology to engage the public.
On The Record’s goal was to merge the sectors of contemporary media arts and mental health, empowering marginalized artists and youth with unique challenges to create their own narrative and share their stories with their community. The experience was designed to take an active role in changing the predominant notions associated with mental health.
The culminating exhibition, Mentalmorphosis, was showcased at Centre[4]Arts’ gallery during the February 2017 Art Crawl and featured all of the digital stories in a theatre setting, as well as sound art installations that were engineered to play as an audio recording with the press of a button.
As a whole, On The Record was a program that enriched the lives of many individuals living with mental illness and the City of Hamilton.
On The Record was developed with support from the Canada Council for the Arts, and in collaboration with Good Shepherd’s Notre Dame House and ArtForms Youth Art Studio.
