Every Monday we share support and altered service information from our Partners, to help maintain your mental health and navigate the current pandemic. This week we want to bring you the work of First Fortnight.
First Fortnight is a charity that challenges mental health prejudice through arts and cultural action.
Check out what they have been working on lately in response to the current situation and read about their upcoming festival in January 2021:
“First Fortnight’s mental health/creative therapy service provision was suspended along with the closure of HAVEN House, however during the current measures, our therapists are doing phone calls to check in with service users.
We were one of the few lucky enough to deliver a festival programme to a live audience this year in January in collaboration with amazing mental health and arts organisation. For this wee miracle we’re very grateful.
This January 2021, will be our 10th Anniversary and in the current climate feels like we’ll be programming our most critical festival to date. We held a call out for submissions and extended the call out to May 3rd to give people more time to submit. We will launch our programme officially at the end of November, so be sure to keep most of January free for cultural treats across the country!
During this challenging time, creativity seems to have flourished with people coming up with incredible ideas to help support, distract, and entertain the masses. We are posting weekly Hyggleig updates of our weekly finds from good news stories, mental health supports to virtual reality tours of countries, online jigsaws, and quizzes.
https://www.firstfortnight.ie/posts
Hyggelig is defined as “taking pleasure from the presence of gentle, comforting and soothing things; a feeling of friendship, warmth, peace and contentment in a comfortable and cosy atmosphere.”
Remember to only keep your physical distance from people and to stay connected.
During this time, we are conscious that this is extremely difficult time for artists and art venues across the country. Artists in Ireland are living with no safety net, working from gig to gig, event to event and art venues rely on box office and café/bar income. If you’d like to show your support, please consider buying online artist merch or art venue gift vouchers or donating to funds like the Civic Theatre’s amazing Artist Emergency Relief Fund.
Link:
Take care and we’ll see you in January!!”
