Mentioned in the Scottish Parliament

As we said in previous posts, our exhibition and book launch was opened by Malcolm Chisholm, MSP. He mentioned us in a speech he made at the Scottish Parliament on the 29th of February, on a debate on the "see me" anti-stigma campaign.

I have a particular interest in the matter this week because, on Friday, "Oor Mad History: A Community History of the Lothian Mental Health Service User Movement" is being launched in my constituency. I was honoured to be asked to write a foreword and I will speak at the launch. I am certainly aware from the work that people have done in Lothian that significant progress has been made on the wider front in relation to respecting people with mental health problems. It is appropriate to mention that and to see the see me campaign as part of a wider movement for change and improvement.

The Service User Movement in Lothians was first mentioned in the Scottish Parliament during the campaign for what we still call the new Mental Health Act: The Mental Health (Care and Treatment) (Scotland) Act (2003) which became law in 2005. 

Exhibition

Last night we took the exhibition down. We felt quite sad - we had been so excited putting it up, and it has been wonderful to see so many people visit it, talk with them, read the comments...

We started before the exhibition with this:

then during the exhibition, it looked like this:

and last night it was back to this:

The exhibition ran from Friday 1 October to Thursday 14 October at the Drill Hall, Dalmeny Street, off Leith Walk, Edinburgh.

We shared the space with

• Much More Than A Label - art works by people who were involved with the PD work which CAPS has been working on;
• Outlook, the mental health community education project who displayed posters that students made about recovery and
• Equally Connected a mental health project for people from Black and Minority Ethnic communities.

It was part of the Scottish Mental Health Arts and Film Festival which runs every October and aims to help challenge attitudes towards mental health through the arts.

A book, a CD, an exhibition - what next?

The book!

After a busy summer, working on the Oor Mad History book, on the CD and on the Oor Mad History exhibition, we are back blogging.

We launched the book on the afternoon of Friday 2 October, which was the first day of the exhibition.

Over 100 people attended, a great mix of activists from all eras, allies old and new, and interested members of the public. It was so good to see so many people coming together and I got a thrill out of seeing people talking intently about the exhibition, sharing memories, and swapping ideas.

We had great speeches from Malcolm Chisholm who opened the event, Jim McGill and Kirsten MacLean.

Malcolm Chisholm is MSP for Edinburgh North and Leith and a long-term ally of the user movement in the Lothians.

Jim McGill is a long-term activist and now a volunteer interviewer, archivist and member of the steering group for Oor Mad History. He spoke about his experience with Oor Mad History and his hopes for the future.

Kirsten MacLean, community history worker, has worked tirelessly over the past 2 years on so many aspects of the project. She explained some of what we have done, and thanked a long list of people who have been involved in so many different ways in Oor Mad History.

Kirsten shows off the book

The overwhelming interest in the book and exhibition has confirmed what we have always thought - this is too good to stop. We have lots of ideas on what we want to do next. Now we need to plan for the future.

If you have ideas on what we should do, how we could do it, or want to get involved in any way, please contact Kirsten MacLean, our community history worker, at kirsten@capsadvocacy.org

You can get a copy of the book and the CD from Kirsten as well. A PDF of the book will be available on this blog soon.