Mark Titchner, 'Some Questions About Us'

Bethlem Gallery’s Mental Health and Justice Project Report

We are so pleased to be able to share with you our final report on Bethlem Gallery’s Mental Health and Justice Project which ran from 2018-22 and was funded by the Wellcome Trust. 

In the report you can dig deeper into the research and evaluation that happened as part of the project, explore some key numbers that illustrate at a glance the full breadth of the work and how far and wide it has been shared, as well as exploring more thoroughly each of the four years in our overview sections.  

Lucy Owen, Producer of Bethlem Gallery’s Mental Health and Justice Project reflects on the project in her foreword;

“At the beginning of 2018, Bethlem Gallery (staff, artists and volunteers), were leaping around celebrating. A major opportunity had arrived for the small gallery team to place artists and audiences with lived experience at the heart of current research into a complex area where mental health and human rights intersect. We had been awarded the largest grant in the gallery’s history, aside from our core funding, and it had been years of planning leading up to the application.  

Wellcome, our funders, had awarded us a four year provision for public engagement grant and we all knew that there was exciting, hard work ahead of us. The feedback from Wellcome had boosted our confidence: ‘The board agreed that the application is strong, with clear aims and good links to and integration within the research’ and ‘recognised the excellent partnership with Bethlem Gallery, liked the collaborative and participatory arts approach and considered the programme to be realistic and feasible yet ambitious and exciting’. Wellcome had not only provided us with a substantial amount of money, but they had also provided us with the equally valuable provisions of time and public recognition. We have never taken that for granted and we remain deeply grateful to Wellcome for those three assets. 

The art that has sprung from this project has gone on to have a reach and a public impact that we didn’t dare to imagine in our initial application. Those engagement figures and that breadth of engagement has come about, not because of a pressured focus on delivery but because of a spirited and careful concern with the making of work.”

Read Lucy’s foreword in full and explore more on our Mental Health and Justice Project page here.

Bethlem Gallery Contact Form

"*" indicates required fields

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.