Image Caption: Joyful group photograph of participants from Unseen, Club Heal and Asha & Co gathered around a table full of cooking stations and ingredients, photographed at Ground-up Initiative in Singapore. Our collaborators in Myanmar, Aung Mental Health, join our gathering remotely via zoom, and are pictured on a laptop.
Presented by Unseen Art Initiatives (Singapore) & Aung Mental Health (Myanmar)
Edible Art Club is a new intercultural collaboration between Unseen Art Initiatives (Singapore) and Aung Mental Health Initiative (Myanmar), which seeks to bring together the unique capacities and experiences of disabled communities from Myanmar and Singapore, through the art-based community engagement.The art and cultural activities shared with these communities arise from the collaborating organisations’ combined experience in art-based community-building, working with disabled artists and persons and engaging with mental health and wellbeing.
For Singapore, apart from our community of visually-impaired persons, our partners include Club Heal, an NGO that focuses on mental health, including Dementia, and Asha & Co, a peer support community that promotes mental wellness through cooking, art and community gatherings. Our programme involves a weekly gathering to prepare and cook one locally inspired meal led by visually-impaired home chef Penny Chong, followed by artmaking and collective reflections.
Aung Mental Health Initiative will host a joint physical art exhibition from 21 - 27 Jan 2023 at Alliance France/Institut Français de Birmanie, Yangon, Myanmar, connecting with Singapore’s collaborators and communities with Myanmar's socially engaged art and cultural scene.
On 25 Feb 2023, we will co-host a free Public Zoom Webinar that focuses on the processes, challenges and learning insights developed during the collaborative project together, and on building an understanding of the unique context of working with disabled communities in both countries, facilitating communication and connection between the public, art groups and disabled communities.
Image caption: All smiles from our participants in Singapore, Symone, Zu, Rendi, Dewi and Arifah prepare to cook their meals by washing vegetables at our workshop venue, Ground-up Initiative.
Image caption: After artmaking, members from Aung Mental Health Initiative and visually impaired community enjoy communal meals together, cooked by local chefs who have researched indigenous recipes from Myanmar.
Image Caption: During each workshop in Myanmar, members of Aung Mental Health who already have developed experience with painting over the years, work in pairs to support visually-impaired participants who are new to the medium.
Collaborators
Since 2015, Aung Mental Health Initiative has worked with people with different mental health conditions, psychosocial and intellectual disabilities through art-based initiatives (WHO Human Rights and mental health department documented the Aung MHI as a good practice technical package community mental health service in 2021.)
Aung Mental Health Initiative believes that an integrated approach is critical to improving the long-term well-being of people with mental health issues. Our service users and their families can access different types of support to address their needs, including counselling, psychiatric medication, support groups, medical care, and vocational skills training. Through our community-based care model and art-based interventions, we assist people at risk of being institutionalised and those living in mental hospitals by building meaningful lives in their communities. Our programme also supports families in caring for their loved ones in their homes. It offers caregivers respite by creating safe spaces for their loved ones to learn and engage with art and community activities.
Unseen Art Initiatives is a Singapore-based arts platform that aims to evoke and harness the creative potential of people through the arts. Through arts-based interventions and curating art exhibitions and cultural programmes, we enable collaborations between professional and emerging disabled artists across creative industries and with schools, community organisations and public institutions. Our flagship projects include Move For?ward (Unseen: Inside Out) 2020 - 2022, which premiered at the National Gallery Singapore's Light to Night Festival, Unseen: Constellations (2014 - 2016), a mentorship programme for visually-impaired youth and Unseen: Shift Lab (2015) a collaborative project with Dialogue-in-the-Dark Malaysia and artists from Kuala Lumpur. Our platform also developed research for the pilot Touch Art Collection for the Singapore Art Museum and National Gallery Singapore, researching accessibility practices for visually-impaired patrons in museums.
Principal Partner
