Glasgow Girls: stigma and storytelling

On 26 March 2015 the Mental Health Foundation staged The Dust of Everyday Life, a conference at the CCA in Glasgow designed to ask challenging questions about the relationship between mental health and the arts. The findings will help to shape future editions of the Scottish Mental Health Arts and Film Festival, as we prepare for our tenth programme in 2016. This is a recording of the opening session, in which we marked the tenth anniversary of the Glasgow Girls campaign by looking back at how a group of Drumchapel schoolgirls helped transform perceptions of a stigmatised community, and asking what other campaigners, and storytellers, can learn from them. The panel consisted of Amal Azzudin (one of the Glasgow Girls, now working for the Mental Health Foundation), Cora Bissett(creator of Glasgow Girls the musical), Brian Welsh (director of Glasgow Girls the TV drama) and Lindsay Hill (director of the Glasgow Girls documentary). The session was chaired by Joyce McMillan (theatre critic and cultural commentator, the Scotsman).