Category: Alternatives

Component Evaluation: Gallery Text

Component Evaluation: Gallery Text Time: 60 minutes; flexible Format: In-Class; online Begin with a short lesson on elements of clear writing and successful exhibit writing. This could include going over visitor expectations, different types of exhibit labels, and clear language. Have students work either in small groups or on their own, have them write object …

Mad Artists’ Gallery

Mad Artists’ Gallery Takeaways Appreciate the importance of art-making and creative self-expression as a healing practice for racialized mad people who often have adverse experiences in the traditional mental health system Understand art as a form of activist engagement with, and critique of, interlocking systems of oppression Recognize the value of art-making as a medium …

Component Evaluation: Community Grant Proposal

Component Evaluation: Community Grant Proposal Time: 120 minutes; flexible Mode: In class; Online Community art collaborations are supported by a variety of institutions that help fund different projects. This funding is a crucial part of ensuring the larger success of a project. Funding allows organizers to be paid, to seek out needed materials, and the …

Component Evaluation: Anti-Racist and Anti-Oppression Workshops

Component Evaluation: Anti-Racist and Anti-Oppression Workshops Time: 45-60 minutes Mode: In class; Online The artist shared their belief that mental health professionals should be participating in anti-oppressive and anti-racist workshops on an annual basis at the bare minimum. Yet, these workshops tend to be offered as one-offs through employers, or individuals have to seek out …

Component Evaluation: Imagining Alternatives

Component Evaluation: Imagining Alternatives Time: 30 minutes Mode: In class; Online Our current mental health system does not support a variety of care and wellbeing needs. Often people are only encouraged to seek out talk therapy. With this in mind, and with the artists call to diversifying how we practice care and wellbeing, either facilitate …

Component Exploration

Component Exploration – the “days” Timing: 30 Minutes Mode: In-Class; Online River is a queer trans youth who identifies as white and racialized. Their component presented is the art piece “days.” The second component is a set focus group and interview excerpts which include River’s explanation of how they created the piece, and their thoughts …

The ‘days’

The ‘days’ Unit Takeaways Appreciate the connection between art and healing Value of the role of art as an alternative to, or combined with, mental health care Understand the importance of creative self-expression for conveying the complexity of lived experience at the intersections of madness, race, gender, and sexuality Recognize the importance of creating a …

Component Evaluation: Asking for Funding

Component Evaluation: Asking for Funding Time: 30 minutes Mode: In class; Online In September 2015, the Gallery Gachet Collective learned that their primary source of operational funding, the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority (the regional health), were cutting all financial assistance to the organization.  After students have viewed the Gachet video, share news of this decision …

Component Evaluation: Role Play

Component Evaluation: Unity Housing – Role Play Timing: 30 Minutes Delivery: In-class These teaching resources were co-created by university instructors and “community experts”, people who have used mental health services. Community experts contributed ideas but also made their own components. The Unity Housing: A Better Way video is one of these components. Community expert Alex …