The Open Shutters Project celebrates people who have lived with mental health issues but have gone on to lead full and satisfying lives - not in spite of their mental health journey but through taking the positives from that experience.
Campaigns that seek to remove the stigma of mental illness are great, and we fully support them, but Open Shutters wants to go beyond that, and recognise that many people feel that their mental illness has actually been turned to their advantage, and led them down new career paths, or given them new or deeper insights.
Open Shutters will be staging an exhibition in Gallery Oldham opening on September 15th and running until 10th November, and there will be a special event for World Mental Health Day on October 10th. There will also be a book to accompany the exhibition.
The Crowdfunder is to create community of support for the project, to seek funding for project costs including the exhibition e.g printing and framing 25 large portraits, printing exhibition guides and an accompanying book, and to enable the work of the project to continue after the exhibition.