Stereotypes and Stigma

My work has been exploring the stereotypes of minority groups and the stigma felt by members of those groups.  For this art practice, I have been working with a group of women  who have been affected by mental health problems in a participatory setting, and we have co-created work over an eight session period.  These women had already attended a Positive Reflections workshop with previously, and Western Valley Community First agreed to fund a further course for them.

This work contributes to my MA Arts Practice (Arts, Health and Wellbeing) at University of South Wales.

For this work, we discussed critical and negative beliefs about ourselves, and where they came from – such as parents, peers, society, media.  They wrote down the names that they most commonly called themselves and I collated some of them onto one page.  The participants then opted for ways in which they could stop the negative messages entering their heads, or repeating them to themselves.

Stereotypes and Stigma Photographs

Exhibition

These photographs were exhibited as part of the MA Arts Practice Interim Exhibition – X – at Jacob’s Gallery, West Canal Wharf, Cardiff.