Medium as message: making an ‘emancipating’ film on mental health and distress

Abstract

This article will be a reflective report, made by participants, facilitators and tutors, on the first stage of a project entitled ‘Mentalentity’, which had as its brief the promotion of positive attitudes to mental health among men in rural areas. The arts ‘product’ is a 25‐minute film made by a group of men in South Armagh using an action learning and action research approach. The project is a paradigm of ‘action research’ using arts‐based methods also, in that none of the men had ever been involved in filmmaking and had to learn a wide range of skills to convert the knowledge they were reflecting on into an arts product; avoiding the sensationalising of a very complex subject and, equally, the earnestness sometimes associated with ‘awareness raising’ projects. The project is funded by a statutory agency, the Southern Investing for Health Partnership, and is being implemented by two voluntary groups, Men Aware (South Armagh) and the pan‐disability group Out and About, working with Queen’s University, School of Education, Open Learning Programme, which facilitated and accredited the project, and the Nerve Centre, an internationally renowned independent arts organisation that specialises in music, multimedia, and the moving image. The article will relate the project to a range of arts‐based projects undertaken by the contributors and will contextualise this work within the research in such fields as inclusive participative and emancipatory research, qualitative research methodologies, active learning pedagogy, arts‐based pedagogy, social/relational model disability and cutting‐edge ‘psychosocial’ models in mental health.