Information

Mental health has become a prominent theme at the Edinburgh Fringe in recent years, with more and more performers explicitly addressing it in their work, but trying to talk about very personal, often traumatic experiences at the world’s biggest and busiest arts festival comes with many challenges.

Our next Mental Health Arts Network event will be an in person event at Dance Base in Edinburgh with theatre-maker Leah Shelton (winner of the 2024 Mental Health Foundation Fringe Award for Batsh!t) and comedian Dave Chawner, who has been combining stand-up and mental health activism for over a decade now.

Leah and Dave will be in conversation with Andrew Eaton-Lewis, Arts Programme Officer for the Mental Health Foundation, who recently led on the creation of Performing Anxiety, a resource for people who want to make audience-facing or participatory arts projects about mental health. Andrew also leads on the Mental Health Foundation Fringe Award, an annual award that recognises outstanding new work about mental health at the Edinburgh Fringe.

The event includes a light breakfast and will take place in Dance Base’s events studio – a (relatively) peaceful space amid the intensity of Edinburgh in August.

If you’re making creative work about mental health, thinking about doing so, or are just interested in this subject, we’d love you to come along and join the discussion (or, if you prefer, just listen).

This is a limited capacity event so book early!

About the Mental Health Arts Network

The Mental Health Arts Network is a year-round initiative by the Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival to bring together a community of artists interested in making creative work about mental health. Over the next three years we are curating a series of gatherings, each exploring a different topic or theme in partnership with guest experts, while also providing opportunities for artists to meet and talk.