Wes

Hi all. Thanks very much indeed for your concern about my hip. You’re very kind and it’s much appreciated! I’m doing a lot better following the injection and am back at work and still busy making plans for a big year of events.

This year our new ‘Lunatic Fringe’ project will deliver mental health related events and activities at 10 Liverpool festivals. We’re co-ordinating our own two festivals again (Mad Pride in April and Liverpool Mental Health Festival in October) and also working in partnership with Liverpool Irish Festival, DaDaFest, Africa Oyé, Liverpool Pride, WoWFest, MilapFest, Liverpool SoulFest and Healthy Souls Festival.

Each festival activity we’re involved in will be linked to public engagement in mental health research, in partnership with colleagues at the University of Liverpool, and will be co-designed/curated/delivered by community members who experience mental distress.

It’s a big task but we’re lucky to be collaborating with a lot of great people along the way. Wesley Storey is just one of them.

The lovely Wes is a photographer and film-maker www.wesleystorey.com who’s recently set up a community film initiative called Iron Lung, and we’re making plans, amongst other things, to have him support a group of local people to make some short films about their own mental health experiences, which we’ll show as part of the Mental Health Festival in October. It’s going to be amazing!

Today’s song is, of course, ‘My Iron Lung’ by Radiohead www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4BE8lTSHFg