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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.

Our third gathering will begin with a workshop led by film-maker Julian Triandafyllou (see details below). Julian works with the survivor-led organisation Traumascapes, who have previously presented work as part of the Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival. If you’re unfamiliar with Julian’s work, we can recommend a blog he wrote for Traumascapes called I watched myself directing my own memory: creating a trigger device vs creating healing. ) The workshop will be followed by an informal conversation and networking session.

Whose story am I telling? Filmmaking through the lens of lived experience, with Julian Triandafyllou

This workshop will invite participants into a process of exploring what it means to collaborate with your lived experience through creative practice with a specific focus on filmmaking. We will be exploring the difference between creating conscious and unconscious depictions, about being triggered by your own material, and exploring methods of building safety within your own frames of reference.

Julian Triandafyllou did his BA at Central Saint Martins, London and his MA at the Edinburgh College of Art working under Emma Davie. His work – mainly moving image, but more recently involving text – has explored the nature and experience of living with trauma, but themes also revolve more generally around time, memory, place and language. He has been working as an artist with Traumascapes since 2022 and is currently the Operations Manager for the organisation. He is also training to become an LGBTQ+ affirmative integrative counsellor with ELOP, London.