This year, Living Words are the lead partner on a Kent-wide project for young people happening throughout 2022. Flux is a programme made up of a series of creative arts interventions that aim to improve the mental health and wellbeing of marginalised children and young people who are at risk of self-harm, worsening mental ill health, and suicide.
The creative interventions are being delivered by a selected group of Kent-based cultural partners (lead partner: Living Words, with Gulbenkian, The Marlowe, Ideas Test, Community Art Kent), with onsite support/supervision from mental health social and public health experts. Whether it’s a one-day workshop at a school or a six-month project at a local youth hub, every young person involved is working with professional artists, with the opportunity for many to partake in getting a nationally recognised Arts Award, with outcomes, projects, creations, and learnings shared at a large-scale event at a cultural institution in December.
Flux ask you to get creative in whatever you’re interested in, and from whatever ability. Flux believes access to the arts enables young people to be heard and seen, and to see themselves differently, improving their mental health outlook. Flux aims to support young people to feel confident that arts and culture in their home town/city belongs to them, that the institutions and organisations in their town/city are places they feel comfortable accessing, feel seen and represented by, and feel them to be places in which their lives can flourish.
This is part of building a future in which structures and support systems are in place to create and celebrate sustainable cross and inter-sector working between arts organisations and mental health services. Flux would love us all to feel that we live in a county that listens to every member of society, and that the arts, local government, and the NHS, can work in true collaboration – each supporting, and lifting the other up.
Aside from project leading, Living Words is running its own Flux project, working directly with 18-25 LGBTQIA+ people, who are also known as in this case, Living Warriors. In building on the Living Warriors' Mental Health work done so far, we are now operating out of a specially built area in Folkestone Library for this project to take shape and grow. As we learn from this year's project members, we are now (July 2022) runing 6-week projects followed by workshops that support members’ further creative engagement in putting their words out to the world via film, song, and spoken word, with plans to share this work at Folkestone Pride.
From this work, Living Words have now been directly commissioned in 2022 for a documentary regarding Living Warriors: Flux LGBTQIA+ & self-harm, by the BBC. More information coming soon…
@flux.kent
Living Warriors: Flux video & tape
Living Warriors: Flux is a co-created film made by project members from the spring and summer Living Warriors: Flux projects, 2022 . The film premiered at The Sassoon Gallery at Folkestone Library on the 19th July 2022 as part of the project’s sharing event, and has been shown at The Roundhouse as part of Beyond & Between season, as well as at Folkestone Pride. The film is also part of ‘Our Screen Heritage’: a new lottery project for 2022 that is funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund. It has been developed by Screen Archive South East in association with @queerinbrighton , @pridefolkestone and @margatepride designed to discover, preserve and share LGBTQIA+ films made in Kent and the South East.
Flux is a year-long programme of participatory projects featuring a collective of cultural organisations across Kent and Medway, UK, together with the social and public health sectors. Through the use of creativity, we aim to give specific groups of young people tools to express and see themselves in new ways. Living Warriors: Flux is a series of projects with LGBTQIA+ young people, taking place in Folkestone, Kent across the seasons of 2022. The project is run by Living Words, a national arts and literature organisation based in Kent. Living Words have been working in their Listen Out Loud method since 2007 - a creative technique that brings two people together, one to speak and one to write. Together they co-create individualised word books. These words are sometimes then shared with the public through publication, performance, film and song. The whole Flux project is funded and supported by Artswork, Arts Council England, Kent County Council, Medway Council, KMPT NHS. It is part of Artswork's Supporting Young Minds Investment Programme, and Kent and Medway's Saving Lives Innovation Funding Initiative. For more general information about Living Words, visit: www.livingwords.org.uk.