Viewpoints: art and mental health

It’s the 11 year anniversary of our CAST art group‘s Annual Exhibition! CAST is a creative arts group run for and by people living with mental health difficulties and distress. We’re really proud to run an exhibition each year featuring work by our group, as well as the wider Sheffield community.

This year, we’re partnering with Sheffield Health and Social Care (SHSC), which means we have over 85 artworks in the show by Sheffield people who have experienced mental health issues, as well as their loved ones and carers (including inpatients from around the city).

It’s been quite a challenge to plan. We booked our venue nice and early this year – booking the Winter Gardens way back in January.

Since then….well. One of our CAST members took this fantastic photo of the Winter Gardens on one of his daily strolls during lockdown. Not long afterwards, the Winter Gardens had to take the difficult step of cancelling all events, and we found ourselves without a venue. But the beautiful artwork had been streaming in…so the show had to go on!

We were super lucky to find an unusual but exciting new venue, thanks to Soo from SHSC: the Moor Market. It’s a special space and we hope it’ll bring our work to lots of new people (Moor Market shoppers!). We hope the exhibition will bring a bit of brightness, hope and humour to these difficult times.

Of course, we only want people to come to the exhibition if they feel safe, which is why we’ve also invested in an online gallery so you can see all the work safe from home.

If you do come down to the exhibition, please bring your mask, stay at a safe distance, and follow all of the government’s guidelines.

A huge, huge thank you to all the artists for brightening our year with their beautiful work, and to our brilliant CAST volunteers!