Isobel Phelan, talks about her experiences of working on the exhibition ‘Exploring Young People’s Identity and Wellbeing’ currently on display at Cartwright Hall.

This project has taken a year to plan, prepare for and budget, not to mention over thirty meetings, loads of coproduction and codesign all leading to the opening on 1 July. Over the past month the Healthy Minds apprentice team began preparing the exhibition room for the first ever children and young people’s mental health exhibition here at our very own Cartwright Hall; we finally got here!

The name of the exhibition has changed over the course of the year – up until the very last minute the apprentices were still deliberating a name for the exhibition, that not only fit, but also set the right tone for the exhibits. We all agreed on ‘Exploring Young People’s Identity and Wellbeing’ – we chose this name because we didn’t want to use the term ‘mental health’ and identity and wellbeing is a huge part of a young person’s life, their growth, physiologically and psychologically, so we settled on this name, which we think is quite fitting.

We’ve worked with so many different organisations to bring this exhibition together, such as Youth In Mind, NHS Bradford and Craven, Act As One, Born In Bradford, Bradford Council, Young In Covid, Bradford 2025, Young Dynamos, Bradford Youth Service, Equity Partnership, National Literacy Trust Programme and many more amazing services who have helped this one-of-a-kind exhibition come together and come to life! This exhibition not only has lots of different exhibits, but it has many moods, feeling and emotions, which young people have projected onto the walls of the gallery through art, photography, poems and sound; it’s very inclusive and it’s very Bradford!

I think the hardest thing we had to do for the exhibition was to paint the gallery walls ourselves, this was quite a laborious task and it really tired us out, trust me when I say, I won’t be making a career out of painting. We had a massive tidy up after, but mostly argued (jokingly) over who would get the last bag of cheese and onion crisps from our much-needed snack box; but once this part was done, all we had to do was start assembling the exhibits – I say ‘we’ but there was a lot of help from our senior team, lead curator Jill and technician Len, who were both amazing and really nice people.

We started the week with a blank canvas, an empty room, a big room, but once things were coming together the exhibition started to fill up and the final result of a week of installation surpassed all expectations. It was a stress, it was hot, sweaty and we really did feel the pressure, physically and emotionally, I mean what if people don’t like the exhibition? Or the commissioning team think it’s a waste of money? What then? I guess it’s subjective, and if our exhibition helps just one child or young person and inspires them, or even any adult to further understand children and young people’s emotions and feeling, then it’s a success, because it further broadens the conversation of wellbeing and most importantly in a free community setting. Our vision was to create an honest, genuine and interesting insight into how children and young people are affected by their environment, things they struggle with, and manage and celebrate their mental health and wellbeing and we believe that we have achieved that.

Isobel Phelan – Healthy Minds Apprentice

The exhibition is free and continues at Cartwright Hall Art Gallery until Sunday 2 October 2022.