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Join us for a comprehensive one-day workshop hosted by the Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival, during which we’ll share good practice techniques for making audience-facing creative work about mental health.

The workshop will cover telling your own story, telling other people’s stories including how to work with vulnerable participants, and producing skills including learning about access riders, contracts, safeguarding, wellbeing practitioners, and more.

The workshop will take place at Civic House in Glasgow. Our flexible, ‘pay what you can’ ticket price includes a light lunch.

Performing Anxiety is the Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival’s new resource for people who want to make audience-facing or participatory arts projects about mental health. It includes a 60-page publication, a podcast, a user-friendly good practice guide, and in depth interviews with experts, covering autobiographical work, participatory work, safer working environments, leadership, and more.

Our one-day workshop will feature workshop sessions led by three experts who contributed to the resource – writer Ross Mackay, writer-producer Mariem Omari, and producer Stephanie Katie Hunter.

Performing Anxiety is supported by the Baring Foundation.

Workshop Timetable

10.30am Welcome
Tea and coffee

11am Telling My Story
Exploring autobiographical work about mental health with Ross Mackay

12pm Other People’s Stories
Exploring participatory work about mental health with Mariem Omari

1pm Lunch
Included in the ticket price

2pm Safe Spaces
Producing work about mental health with Stephanie Katie Hunter

About the Artists

Ross Mackay

Ross Mackay is a theatre-maker and writer. As former artistic director of theatre company Tortoise in a Nutshell, his productions toured the world and won numerous awards; the company’s shows include Fisk, a show shaped by Ross’s experiences of living with depression. More recently Ross has published two children’s books, Will and the Wisp and Daddy’s Bad Bed Day, both of which also drew on his experiences of depression, as well as continuing to work in theatre as a writer.

Mariem Omari

Mariem Omari is a playwright, screenwriter and producer who has created a series of acclaimed artistic projects through her company Bijli Productions, all of which have drawn on other people’s mental health stories, often with participants telling their stories themselves. These include If I Had a Girl, One Mississippi, Doing it Our Way, A Knot a Day and We Make the Path.

Stephanie Katie Hunter

Stephanie Katie Hunter is artistic director of Scissor Kick, a production company that “champions artists that make observant, transformative and unsettling work”. As a freelance producer she has worked with Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, the National Theatre of Scotland, Tramway, Citizens Theatre, Pepperdine University, Glas(s) Performance, and many more, often on projects addressing mental health.