School of Health & Wellbeing

Beyond the Canvas

Byres Community Hub once again hosted the Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival 2024, featuring the "Beyond The Canvas: Voices Unveiled" exhibition. This event showcased vibrant and powerful artwork that captivated visitors, marking the culmination of Empower Women for Change’s See Me funded project. The project, in partnership with the Hub and led by Farida Tukur, EWfC’s Wellbeing Volunteer and a SHW Masters in Global Mental Health student, provided minority ethnic women a platform to share their experiences of mental health stigma through art.

The project included ten bi-weekly workshops focused on storytelling, self-reflection, and creativity, utilizing various art forms such as painting, drawing, knitting with the Hub’s resident group, and mindfulness. Participants hailed from diverse backgrounds, including China, Eritrea, Iran, Nigeria, Pakistan, Puerto Rico, Syria, and Yemen. The final exhibition celebrated their stories as public art, highlighting resilience and fostering community understanding. The event also featured cultural food, music, traditional dress, and zines, with support from Migrant Voice, who connected with Farida at the project's inception after a chance meeting in the Hub.

At the end of this project, Farida emphasised the high demand for culturally sensitive mental health support and the positive impact of combining art creation with culturally meaningful meals. Participants reported increased confidence and empowerment. One participant shared, "This project gave me a voice I never thought I had. It allowed me to express my journey in a way that others could see, understand, and respect."

Read a summary of this project and what it achieved

As 2024’s Black History Month theme was ‘reclaiming narratives’, the Beyond the Canvas exhibition with minority ethnic women expressing their stories through art was a great backdrop to our Hub sharing event.

Black History Month events

• The Hub, Red Cross Voices Network, Scottish Intercultural Association, and Empower Women for Change hosted an event where speakers shared their stories and attendees visited the Voices Unveiled exhibition. VOICES Network is a group of people with lived experience of migration and displacement; they work to change minds, policy and practice. We hope to develop this partnership in 2025 as we can learn so much from network for preparing to engage with lived experience in research. One of the voices on the night spoke of her really positive experience of being part of General Practice and Primary Care’s ‘’missingness’ in health care research project and so it was great that one of the project researchers, Dr David Baruffati, was there to hear this account. Researchers don’t often get the opportunity to hear what participants say about their work afterwards.
• Dr Laura Sharp and Samuel Owusu Achiaw supported students of black heritage to offer a Black History Month lunchtime event reclaiming and honouring African narratives. Funding was secured through the College and University’s Equality and Diversity funding, and the SHW Athena Swan team. It took place in the Wolfson Medical Centre. Please view this fantastic film covering the event and featuring some of the students who organised the event. The exhibition created for the event was then brought to the Clarice Pears building and displayed throughout October. This included posters about the School of Health and Wellbeing’s collaborative research in Africa and its diaspora including antimicrobial resistance in Northern Tanzania, arthritis and joint problems in Tanzania, and long-term conditions in rural and urban Malawi.

Athena Swan Equality and Diversity Month

During our Athena Swan themed month, we were delighted that Byres Hub team member, Lorraine Waddell, was recognised by the College of Medicine, Veterinary and Life Sciences Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Award. The award recognises outstanding achievements in promoting and/or enhancing equality, diversity, and inclusion, within Schools, the College or the wider University.

Through creative engagement methods and skill sharing, Lorraine has helped to empower and integrate people within SHW, the University, and beyond and has helped support and amplify the voices of under-represented communities. Lorraine has championed the Deaf community, raising awareness amongst her colleagues and running initiatives, such as running British Sign Language cafes where staff and students can meet face to face to practice sign language, or online via the SHW BSL Teams site and with community groups who visit the Hub.

Lorraine has also organised our new signed welcome screen in Clarice Pears.

 

Byres Hub Advisory Group

In October, we held our first meeting of this group, representing our Hub community and including all six research teams. This group builds on the Community Engagement with Research internal stakeholder group. Dr Simon Walker and Effie Assan from the School’s Healthy Working Lives Group shared some work they had done looking at the impact of Byres Hub. This will be a stream of work for the advisory group. We aim to further expand our external representation of Hub groups and partners and make these hybrid meetings. If you're one of our Hub groups and are interested in participating and helping to shape the Hub's future, please reach out to Susan Grant.

Hub Mondays

These fortnightly networking events continued through October. They bring so many third sector organisations and local neighbours into the Hub, as well as staff and students. These different perspectives make for fantastic discussions during our themed talks at 11am and the networking often continues far beyond the end of Hub Mondays. Our October themed talks:

• The Overlap of Mental Illness and Physical Health We discussed the link between mental illness and physical health issues like obesity, diabetes, and heart disease. While lifestyle factors and medications were traditionally blamed, recent research indicates shared biological pathways may be responsible. Dr Rona Strawbridge and her colleagues shared their findings.
• CONNECT - Using Digital Devices to Predict Relapse in Psychosis We explored how digital devices can predict relapse in psychosis by monitoring changes in activity, thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. The CONNECT study aims to improve digital inclusion in Glasgow. Attendees learned about the study and shared their insights.

ALISS Drop-in with Soup’erheroes

The team behind Castlemilk’s Soup’erheroes, who partnered with UofG for our Explorathon Community Day in Castlemilk, were featured in our community spotlight session in October. Cath and Bridget shared the stark realities of food poverty in our city, inspiring and moving attendees with the remarkable work of their group. Susan was privileged to later spend a day with Soup’erheroes at their Hub in the Braes Shopping Centre, Castlemilk where they distribute their soup packs and around the estate where in 8 locations the wonderful volunteers as Santa and his elves distributed fresh and non-perishable food hampers, toys, selection boxes and vouchers for older children. Thank you to Kait Laughlin for the introduction to the Soup’erheroes.

 

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First published: 29 January 2025