Connecting for Change

For All I Care

How can we care, collectively? Can we address unequal access to rest and care, creatively?

Join Nwando Ebizie to look at how rest has been politicised, whether the mental health system can be redeemed by art and how to navigate the noise of the city. Guests include Black Power Naps (artists Navild Acosta and Fannie Sosa), researcher Professor Stephani Hatch, artists Dolly Sen and Rowdy SS.

Includes references to slavery and discussion of mental health issues.

If you or someone you know are feeling emotionally distressed, there are organisations that offer advice and support. If you’re in the UK or Ireland you can get in touch with the Samaritans day or night, 365 days a year. You can call them for free on 116 123, email them at [e-mail], or visit www.samaritans.org. Other international helplines can be found at www.befrienders.org.

Episode Notes

Can caring collectively address existing unequal systems and services?

This episode contains references to slavery and discussion of mental health issues.

We consider health inequalities with artist, writer, filmmaker, performer and activist Dolly Sen and Stephani Hatch, Professor of sociology and epidemiology at the Institute of Science, Kings College, London, who is currently leading a Wellcome-funded study, TIDES (Tackling Inequalities and Discrimination Experiences in health services). They discuss centering the voices of people who have been unheard by the UK mental health system through research and through bringing beauty to what Dolly calls an ugly system.

With Black Power Naps, created by artists Navild Acosta and Fannie Sosa, we explore how they tackle unequal access to rest in Western society, where relaxation is a luxury for the privileged and considers some of the ways that the structures of Western societies deny certain people access to something as fundamental as rest. Highlighting the long history of sleep deprivation for black and racialised people and the attempts to justify this inequality with pseudoscience, as part of the ongoing project, the artists have created a Dream Bag as a guidance for better sleep. The toolkit has been specially conceived for people who experience racism regularly in our society, to support breaking with constant fatigue by slowing down and resting. Physical packs to aid relaxation and sleep will be distributed to people based locally to BALTIC, in Gateshead, of South Asian heritage, East Asian, South East Asian heritage, and people of African or Caribbean heritage alongside a digital toolkit, launching online that can be found at www.baltic.art/dreambag.

Settle in for some alone time in the midst of the cacophony of communal sound with London-based international artist Rowdy SS, working with sound, movement, dance, music, installation, and live happening. In this work, Rowdy SS brings our attention to the sounds of communal spaces, which for many of us have taken on new meaning this past year.

If you or someone you know are feeling emotionally distressed there are organisations that offer advice and support. If you’re in the UK or Ireland you can get in touch with the Samaritans day or night, 365 days a year. You can call them for free on 116 123, email them at [e-mail], or visit www.samaritans.org. Other international helplines can be found at www.befrienders.org.

A BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art and Wellcome Collection collaboration. Presented by Nwando Ebizie. Music by Nkisi. Sound by Axel Kacoutié. A Reduced Listening Production, produced by Katherine Godfrey and exec produced by Alannah Chance.

For the full transcript of this episode please visit baltic.art/for-all-i-care

Visit baltic.art or wellcomecollection.org for more information on the contributors and show notes with recommended further reading.