On Mental Health and Social Wellness

Covid 19 has taken away a lot of society’s choices and opportunities these past one and a half years. People usually turn to extreme actions, when they feel they have run out of options and have no more choices before them. Primarily a desperate reaction born out of fear and isolation. Opening up communications and bridging the gap between corporates and communities, will be a good starting point to give youths the tools and the information inaccessible mediums, where they can easily stand behind. While banishing the taboo surrounding these issues, to be able to create inspirational videos to act as an example and an invitation for all generations to heed. Many youths tend to ignore their mental health especially so in these trying times, as they watch the rest of the world suffer through the pandemic, and think that they are not worthy of finding relief or solutions for themselves, leading to depression, violent outbursts and suicide. We are taking this opportunity to talk about these topics openly and bring into focus the truth that many of us suffer in silence and just need the opportunity for self-expression and more choices for us, which will lead to a better mindset for ourselves, our families and our communities.

Let’s find a way to get rid of the growing compassion fatigue to the labels and terms of mental issues and the idea that it still is a taboo topic, wrestling with this has turned old and tired over the years. Instead, pivot to bring an air of open understanding and compassion to people suffering from this invisible pain we carry with us day-to-day. Just ignore the old path of resistance and start over with designing a new way of communicating this. Through images, sound and video, through arts and cultural communication which expresses our inner words and tone of voice in a more compelling and intuitive way.

Nicole Kay

Founder of The Tapestry Project

Nicole K. is the founder and executive director of The Tapestry Project SG — an online community magazine that champions first-person accounts of every day Singaporeans touched by mental illness and recovery. The Tapestry Project SG was inspired by Nicole’s personal struggle with clinical depression and generalised anxiety disorder, for which she has sought treatment and continues towards recovery.

GLin

Director, Commercial Photographer, Coffee Connoisseur and Co-Founder of The Brew Affinity

Glin is a multi-disciplinary director and commercial photographer based in Singapore. Having graduated with a BA(Upper Second-Class Hons) in Communication Design from Glasgow School of Art, Glin enjoys storytelling and producing visuals that provoke thought based on current issues. Her never-ending curiosity lead her to consistently initiate projects with individuals from all walks of life, to broaden perspectives and share their stories through film and photography.

Besides her creative pursuit and passion in visual arts, Glin is also a coffee connoisseur and co-founder of The Brew Affinity, a company that does private coffee workshops that focuses on experiential learning, to share the intricate process, craft and beauty of coffee-brewing while bringing about people together.

She hopes her works and passions are able to continue bringing about connection — to impact the future generations and add value to the society with the never-ending rippling effect

On the youth voice video:
I want to give the youth a voice and this starts with this video journal.

The present problems of young adults are mostly manifestations of the older generation — expectations, projections, on what we SHOULD produce, on how we should live our lives, pursue and do.

The rise of fear, stress and even mental illness, are the result of the disconnection of the older generation to the current young adults.

Pause, and think for a while — we are the future generation, but we’re known to be ‘generation hopeless’, where we indulge in depressive memes and self-deprecating jokes, instead of properly facing our internal issues because we mostly feel — we do not have a voice.

The cause of our fear-based reality and anxiety are in fact due to our experiences with the projections to fair well and what our older folks think is best for us.

Our older folks refuse to recognise the disconnection to our current generation, therefore this film is to challenge the belief that the older generation knows what’s best to keep us afloat. We’re unheard and invalidated for what we think is best for US. Only we know what’s best for us.

The intent of this film is to be our own voice — to show our older folks what we truly like to pursue, and what we envision our future to be. We’re tired of quietly absorbing projections in this fear-based society. We would like to be heard — our vulnerabilities and our vision for a better future for us,

Because we’re the future generation.

Mak

Artist of Depressed Dave

"Mak has been in recovery from depression from 2017. He blogs at https://depressioninsg.com and draws a comic at https://depdavecomics about his experiences with depression, and has combined both in a book - Depressed Dave. He is married to an amazing home baker, with two similarly amazing young adult kids, and two guinea pigs.
He is concerned about youth mental health because of his own struggles - the longer mental health issues sit unchallenged, the more entrenched they get. His hope is for mental health professionals, educators and parents to learn to listen to their youth, instead of trying to always fix them."

Jeevan Nathan

Creator of films as expressions on mental health issues

Jeevan Nathan (Creative Producer - Director)
Majoring in 16 & 35mm Film and Screenwriting, Jeevan graduated from Singapore’s Film, Sound & Video (Ngee Ann Polytechnic, 1999) and went on to further his Directing craft in New York Film Academy (California campus, 2002/03). Upon returning to Singapore, he brought his film style to the digital era.

In his 18 years of working in the media industry, Jeevan has created, written and developed a broad range of productions. He has worked on many genres, agencies and formats including television dramas (for Ch5, CNA, Suria, Okto, AFC, CI network), short films, documentaries, docudramas, infotainment, commercials, video installations, music videos, online films and various arts-design videos.

Jeevan has garnered two awards in MDA’s national screenwriting competitions in 2005/06; was a recipient of Creative Circle Awards for ads directed and produced in 2006/07. His short films and music videos have travelled to film festivals from Singapore, to Indonesia, Australia, Argentina and Vancouver. Five of his original series (Tina’s Catering, Super4orce, Avenue 13, Avenue 14, The Devouring) have been nominated for local and regional awards.
And he won Best Director for a Drama Series at the 24th Asian Television Awards.

As founder of creative production company, Monochromatic Pictures and creative partner in Protagonist by M, Jeevan also serves as an independent filmmaker and a creative director to other companies.
He has taught and mentored at various organisations like Bukit View Secondary School, Ngee Ann Polytechnic, Singapore Polytechnic, Temasek Polytechnic, Glasgow School of Design, BBH DigitasLB.
And he sits on the Executive Committee Board of the Association of Independent Producers (Singapore).

Paul Hume

Creative Director at paulhume.net

Paul has worked for some thirty-five years in various branches of design, advertising and education.
Starting out as an illustrator, he has been a graphic designer, television commercials and promotions director, a motion graphics designer, copywriter, creative director of four advertising companies and most recently a fine artist and educator. He says he has been lucky enough to gain over 100 international awards for both creative and strategic thinking in markets as diverse as the USA, Australia and South-East Asia. Some of his work, notably for the Singapore Armed Forces, is relatively famous, redefined the category, is endlessly imitated and recognised as extremely effective. His productions for Australia’s Nine Network achieved similar goals.

He has been Executive Director and Creative Director of his own advertising agency in Australia: CD of the JMG Group (Australia), CD at Peter Beaumont (with Leo Burnett in Malaysia and S. E. Asia) and Regional CD at Mandate (Singapore, Malaysia, Brunei & Thailand). This means he has worked for a wide variety of brands: banks, shopping malls, fashion stores, tourism destinations, alcoholic beverages, airlines, media, government, military and many more.

Paul holds a Masters from the University of the Arts, London, and in 2017 he completed the Postgraduate Certificate in Learning and Teaching through the Glasgow School of Art and the University of Glasgow. He has lectured Communication Design at The Glasgow School of Art, Singapore since its inception in September 2012, significantly shaping the delivery of the BA course and initiating key developments within the curriculum. He has researched and written extensively about the creative process and articulates a variety of approaches that help students (and others)
understand how they can escape convention, research the brief, find ideas and develop new visions for their projects.

He is currently pursuing the development of a tourism venture in the Philippines due to open in 2023.