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Art of the Mind

The Art of the Mind Festival is a brilliant creative arts festival that runs concurrently with Mental Health Week from the 9-14 October 2022. 

The festival looks at the power of creativity to overcome and manage mental health difficulties. 

Local community organisation GenU is running a series of mental health themed webinars for Mental Health Week. I will be joining a panel of creative people in a webinar titled 'Creative Arts, Managing the Mind and the Mental Health Benefits'.

The panel will be hosted by Jules Haddock where I will be joining distinguished panellists Carly Botheras, Fiona Lucas, Michael Dunstan, Michelle Buggy, Luke Elliot, and Justine Martin where we will be discussing how our artistic practices have helped us during our mental health journeys. 

Most people see my disability as the most difficult thing I have had to deal with in my life but the truth is I can deal with physical pain and limitation a lot easier than I can my depression and anxiety disorder. 

I don't know what I would have done had I not found the creative path.

This year I celebrate twenty four years as an actor and twenty as a poet and it is no exaggeration when I say that I believe these creative arts literally saved my life. 

A lot of people see me as an inspiration and motivational guru and are constantly commenting on my optimism. Many of these same people are shocked and horrified when they read my poetry because it reveals my dark side. What I try to explain to them is I am able to be so positive in my daily life because I can pour out my negative emotions into my poetry. I often say that my audience can learn more about me in a 200 word poem than in one of my two hour seminars. 

My acting has two mental health benefits for me. 

1. Acting is the first thing that allows me to feel completely independent.

2. It allowed me safely to show and feel emotion without feeling weak.

Apart from the personal benefits the creative arts have given me, I believe they are a great way to start the discussion around mental health and mental illness at the same time as destigmatising the topic. 

If you want to hear more of my thoughts, please join the webinar on 12 October and come along on the journey into the art of the mind. 



The Mental Art


When things get heavy I am the draught horse and life is the cart.

This is my clumsy metaphor for the mental art.

Mental illness makes an art of disasters 

Just like DaVinci and Michelangelo are without doubt artistic masters. 


I saw myself as master of the mental art until negative thoughts 

Chiselled away at the mind I had sculpted from the start.

If life is a canvas, mine started off blank and full of possibility

Until it was shaded in by mental anxiety.


My colour palette in the beginning was bright.

Then I went through a blue period where I considered a full stop

But made a quick hop to black each time I suffer a full anxiety attack.

It is hard to describe my thoughts that distract, thank God for Jackson Pollock and his abstract.


When anxiety and depression tries to paint me into a corner and my will is bending,

I remind myself that I am a poet and get to write the ending. 

Before I admit weakness I'd rather die and that's why 

The art of acting is so cathartic because I give myself permission to cry. 


When I am worn down by the daily grind;

I retreat into the art of the mind.

Mental illness is the material from which Satan carves his dart;

Designed to destroy the beauty of the mental art.


© Chris Van Ingen

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