TIme to change

I've spent the day working with friends from the Norwich Dandies a Norwich-based collective of artists who come together now and again to put on events or run workshops and today we were at the Time to Change event outside the Forum, which is series of events being run nationwide to raise awareness of, and challenge discrimination around, mental health issues.

We had a little tent provided by the organisers in which we created an art gallery of paintings, drawings, sketches made by people who came to visit us. We invited people to either dress up and be 'models' or use our art materials to draw or paint whatever they wished. We had a lot of visitors, and our artists ranged from 17 months old to over 70 years.

This is a watercolour done of me, which features my top hat with a sunflower in the brim and the bouquet of plastic flowers that I was clutching to my ample bosom and captures my black jacket, white t-shirt and jeans perfectly. It was painted by a lovely chap who produced several artworks. I love it to bits and am going to frame it.

I think in total we ended up with over 30 artworks - people could either take them away or leave them with us to be photographed and published on Facebook. Actually, all artworks were photographed and will be published online, which all the artists were delighted about.

It was a fabulous event, bang in the city centre in front of the Forum and included a Human Library, live music which included the opportunity to make music from junk, 'pledge cards' for people to create messages about what they personally would do about raising mental health awareness, a cinema running short films and a post office where you could send postcards about the event to anyone you wanted - postage paid.

The Dandies comprise me - photographer affectionately known as Dandy Snap; Eloise O'Hare - multi-talented artist including actress, prop and costume maker; Dugald Ferguson - artist, actor, theatre director and Vince Laws - the founder of the Dandies who is many things including a poet and artist. A fifth Dandy, Chrissy, is heavily involved in theatre but couldn't be with us today.

I am nackered but very, very happy with how today has gone. Time for supper and a beer.