Have finally finished editing!  Any feedback welcome. This film evolved from my research for my dissertation and inspired me to take the realms of my reality to the forefront.  Using film I wanted to invoke emotion and empathy in the audience.  To show what I experience on a nightly basis and the struggles emotionally I have.  I wanted to challenge the viewer’s perception of someone who suffers with mental illness and the role they are perceived to have in society....

I am 2 weeks away from my end of year degree assessment and film is nearly done!  Had a busy few weeks and now the end seems really too close!  Waiting for the exhibition to start installing and then I can get painting my space.  I will post pics of final installation and film as soon as soon as I can tidy it up and upload. Its been a strange few weeks and emotionally been through alot.  Been deciding whether to stay on and do my MA and feeling lost and confused as to what...

It Rained and-a-half! We left Brighton and we broke down!! Changed the car and after that small detour we were on the road!   We would have liked to have met up with Stephen from JUMPcuts in Glastonbury, but unfortunately we were too late and wanted to rest before our screening day. In The morning the sun came out, we arrived at the Engine Room in Bridgwater, it's a great venue and we were made to feel very welcome.  We had a brilliant audience including people from Open...

As you've probably noticed, I've been posting less on this blog than usual. This has been partly due to pressure of other work, but also because I'm finding that my strip cartoon 'The Criptarts' has taken a stronger hold on my creativity. I'm finding that instead of creating a single cartoon around an issue and then writing something to accompany it, as I've been doing with this blog for several years now, my pen gravitates towards the blank frames of the Criptart...

My poems provide a gateway for me to have my say, to share with all those others, to keep strange thoughts at bay. Inviting other nutters to join me if they will, to sing our song of difference, the music never still but winding out in spirals, expressing all we are, that being mad's a journey in a psychedelic car. Its easy to forget that there are others just like me, and the words that I keep writing can help them all to see that they're not alone and struggling, that they're not...

Grave-digging was hazardous work back in the 1960s. There was very little machinery: graves were still largely dug by spade. There were no Health-and-Safety rules. Opening up a grave, after however many years, to inter a new member of the family, was anything but healthy or safe. The typical gravediggers who I met were hard men: ex-Marines, night club bouncers, bare-knuckle boxers. But I am physically small, and have struggled all my life with epilepsy and dyspraxia, which got me sacked from...

Ground-breaking Graeae returns to Greenwich+Docklands International Festival (GDIF) this coming June, for the fifth year with its world premiere of The Limbless Knight - A Tale of Rights Reignited, which reunites the creative team behind The Garden and Against The Tide.

Lisa Simpson is seeking funding to  support disabled choreographers using new technology developed by Adam Benjamin. Lisa and her colleague, Ray Rooney, have set up a social enterprise company to help disabled dancers and their teachers unlock similar potential. Sheila McWattie reports on the initiative

Now in its 18th year, the 2013 International Family Film Festival was held (May 1st - 5th) at Raleigh Studios in the heart of Hollywood. Creative Bucks project Driving Inspiration entered an animation created last year and came first in the Youth Animation Class.

Is it possible to make compelling theatre out of a cardiac arrest? John O’Donoghue went to see Doug Devaney’ show, part of Brighton’s Five Pound Fringe.

COnscription explores the call-up to military service for people who don't 'fit the mould'. The four-channel film is on show at the Old Truman Brewery, London until 18 May. Joe McConnell reviews a multimedia installation which follows the stories of four individuals who meet at a military hospital - three subjects under assessment and their doctor.

A gripping celebration of the forgotten lives of women who survived long term institutional incarceration.  Julie McNamara's 'The Knitting Circle'  (a Vital Xposure production currently on national tour) reviewed by Joe McConnell

Playwright and long-term advocate of positive change in the mental health system Julie McNamara tells Sheila McWattie about her profound experiences of unearthing untold stories of patients and staff from long-stay institutions

Juan delGado tells Joe McConnell about an exciting ongoing project which started in Palestine 3 years ago.

Sarah Hirst is currently in her 3rd and final year on a fine art degree. The theme of her work is about exploring the masks we wear in everyday life. Her gallery of Dream Watercolours represents work that came out of a project making work about experience of hallucinations.

Niamh Clune, Founder of Plum Tree Books sent out a call across Facebook, announcing that she wanted to do an anthology on All The Lonely People... poems, art, prose focussing on the subject of loneliness. DAO presents a sampler from the online anthology.