Un/Stuck: Creative Explorations of Negative Thinking

Un/Stuck is a curated exhibition that showcases creative outputs from a series of workshops (co-produced with young people) to explore everyday experiences of repetitive negative thinking. Artworks are presented in the form of large-scale photographic prints and smaller-scale physical objects. Together, these pieces bring to life young people’s experiences of worry and rumination and suggest positive strategies to support wellbeing.

At the heart of this event is a focus on young people’s mental health and wellbeing, and the potential for creative, participatory research approaches to “give voice” to young people’s everyday mental health experiences. This event is open to all. Visitors will be invited to share their own creative responses to the work, and these will be captured within a suspended collage wall that will form part of the exhibition.

This project is a collaboration between researchers from the School of Psychological Science (University of Bristol), Chris Jarrold and Meg Attwood; artist/researcher, Catherine Lamont-Robinson (Bristol Medical School); and project partners, OTR (Off the Record) and the McPin Foundation. If you have any questions about the exhibition, please don’t hesitate to contact Meg on meg.attwood@bristol.ac.uk

Acknowledgements: This event is part of the ESRC Festival of Social Science 2022 and was made possible thanks to funding from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), which is part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). The work that informed this event was supported by the Elizabeth Blackwell Institute for Health Research, University of Bristol and the Wellcome Trust Institutional Strategic Support Fund.