Jona Frank

Each day I’m managing to do more and more. But I’m still trying to pace myself. I’ve got a busy week ahead...

Today began with an interview for the ‘Mental Health Monday’ feature on Radio City Talk, followed by lunch at my favourite café, Lovelock’s. A welcome return after the best part of 2 months! I’ve really missed it.

Then it was over to The Brink to check out how preparations were going for the hanging of this year’s Mental Health Festival art exhibition, ‘The Art of Falling Apart’. All was looking really good, ahead of the official opening on Thursday.

This year we’ve got a separate stand-alone section of the exhibition called ‘It’s the Travelling Life’ which we’ve worked on in partnership with Liverpool Irish Festival and with the support of Irish Community Care Merseyside. Through the partnership we’ve supported a group of locally based Irish Traveller women, and their families, to photograph their lives and tell their stories; including the impact of anti-Traveller bullying, hate crime and murder on their family lives and mental wellbeing. It was especially pleasing that 3 of the Irish Traveller women who took photographs for the exhibition were able to come along to see it being installed today.

Their photographs were curated by American photographer Jona Frank, who’s come over from California for a few days to oversee the final stage of the project. You can see some of her work at http://jonafrank.com/hs/

It was great to sit down and have a chat with her about the parlous political state in which the USA currently finds itself, the vexed question of Brexit and the Irish border, and much more. She also allowed me to take her portrait - quite an honour, given that she’s such a gifted portrait photographer!


Today’s song just has to be the one after which the exhibition was named... ‘The Art of Falling Apart’ by Soft Cell https://youtube.com/watch?v=UtC8goZr6HU