Mental Health Arts Network: Making Autobiographical Film

Information

The Mental Health Arts Network is a year-round SMHAF initiative to bring together a community of artists interested in making creative work about mental health. 

Our October gathering will explore autobiographical film-making that documents the most challenging of personal experiences. How do you decide what to share and what not to share? What story do you want to tell?This free online event brings together two guests who were recently commissioned by SMHAF to make new short films, both of which will premiere in October as part of the Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival 2025 programme.

Huss is a Glasgow based Arab artist whose practice spans performance, film, moving image, and sound, blending personal and political themes. His new short film is composed of fragments shot during his final visit home to Cairo, just before he was outed and forced into exile, alongside archival material sent from his family home.

Robyn Woolston is an interdisciplinary artist who makes work “navigating the thresholds where material, memory, and ecology converge”. Her new short film was made in response to a recent brain tumour diagnosis, drawing parallels between her own health crisis and the climate emergency, and inviting viewers into “the quiet, sometimes disorienting space where devastation and beauty co-exist”.

Huss and Robyn will be in conversation with Andrew Eaton-Lewis from the Mental Health Foundation, after which there will be an opportunity to ask questions and share your own experiences if you would like to. 

If you would like to hear about future Mental Health Arts Network events, keep an eye on our website, join the festival’s mailing list, or follow us on Facebook or Instagram.

We also recommend Performing Anxiety, our resource for people making creative work about mental health.