Local Artists from Manchester’s pioneering mental health charity TLC-St Luke’s gathered in Swinton Grove Park to launch The Memory Book, a collection of the work they produced during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Containing art works, poems, photographs, stories, diaries, and collages from 44 different contributors, the book showcases the various projects that participants took part in over the last year. In ‘normal’ times TLC-St Luke's offers an arts drop in for people with mental health needs. Moving their activity online during lockdown, they sent out arts packs to their normal participants, encouraging them to continue creating art, then photograph it for inclusion in a regular newsletter.
Rae Story, Lead Media Artist for TLC-St Luke’s came up with the idea for the Memory Book. Rae said: “I wanted to find a way of capturing our participants’ experiences of the past year and the way in which they expressed this through their art”.
The book is published by SlapDash books, TLC-St Luke’s very own community-based publishing house that aims to archive local voices for future generations. This is not an amateur operation – all the books published by SlapDash are housed within the British Library. Editor, Nigel Wood, said: “The Memory Book serves as a portable exhibition of what TLC-St Luke’s Art Project is all about and is a great testament to the resilience and creativity of everyone involved as we all tried to find ways to cope and live our lives as best we could during a very difficult year”.
Most of the project participants haven’t seen each other since the first lockdown and the book launch gave them an opportunity for a long awaited catch up. Tracey, a regular at TLC-St Luke’s for five years and a contributor to the book, attended the launch. She said: “The book is very interesting, and it was a wonderful afternoon seeing everybody there after the last 18 months”. Paul, who has been attending for 3 years, said: “No matter whether one excels in art or not, people are accepted, included and respected, whatever their ability”.
Copies of the book retail at £6.99 and profits go to TLC-St Luke’s Arts Project. The Memory Book a year in lockdown