Happy Soul Film and Arts Festival: aims and background

The pioneering annual Happy Soul Festival looks at celebrating the best Black and Asian film and arts. It also explores the critical area of building awareness of mental health issues in the Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) communities here in London.

The festival takes an unusual approach to mental health in that it attracts its hard-to-reach BME communities using feature films with mental health themes, and by inviting great actors to talk about their lives and careers or latest film roles, in which discussion of the importance of mental health awareness is also included. This helps greatly in making a difficult subject more palatable.

Mental health amongst the Black and Asian communities in the UK is a key issue for the UK Government task force Delivering Race Equality (DRE), in an effort to improve the treatment of members of these communities within the mental health system, especially Black men. At the same time, the mainstream agencies are not always effectively engaging with BME communities.

Happy Soul started last year with a pilot project aimed at Asian communities and was core funded by the South West London and St Georges NHS Mental Health Trust.

It took place in the South West London Borough of Merton. The Odeon Wimbledon and Merton Council offered venues for free. The festival built strong links with several community partners who helped draw in a considerable audience. It was a big success with new films being screened which attracted large audiences and a good deal of media coverage on mental health awareness, both in local press and national media. This included a 20-minute debate on BBC Radio Fours Womans Hour about mental health and Asian communities. Indian actress Nandita Das was the key guest and proved to be an excellent speaker on her film career, human rights work and mental health awareness.

We are now producing our second festival to a larger brief which sees us growing the festival to cover other south London boroughs, including Wandsworth, Merton and Kingston, and targeting Asian and African-Caribbean communities, as well as a screening dedicated to Korean communities.

Comedian Meera Syal is our first patron and we are currently in discussion with her and major film actors to donate their time to come and talk at our festival. The Odeon Wimbledon has again committed its support to the festival. South West London and St George's Trust has also committed to core fund the project, which helps towards meeting its outreach objectives in a sustainable way.

We are currently liaising with local council partners, other funding bodies and organisations about additional cash and in-kind support. 

With community participation, our aim is to sustain and grow Happy Soul to become a vital link between the Trust and local communities.

Cary Rajinder Sawhney
Director, Happy Soul Festival
cary.sawhney@swlstg-tr.nhs.uk
26.11.07