The MIC Project Week 1

The project I have chosen to work on for the cross platform project is called The MIC Project. It is going to be an audio visual installation, designed to educate people on the experience of people suffering from mental health problems in prisons. For the first week, we are all going to go away and do individual research about people's experiences of prison. We're considering making a first person piece based in a prison so we need to find statistics, first person accounts, and watch documentaries. Alf, who initially designed the project pointed us towards this radio documentary

<http://soundportraits.org/on-air/tossing_away_the_keys/> (2013)
A radio drama recorded by prisoners in a jail in 1990 about their experience of living the rest of their life span in jail and the effects it had on them. This is the starting point for my research.


According to the website Mental Health:

• More than 70% of the prison population has two or more mental health disorders. (Social Exclusion Unit, 2004, quoting Psychiatric Morbidity Among Prisoners In England And Wales, 1998)
• Male prisoners are 14 times more likely to have two or more disorders than men in general, and female prisoners are 35 times more likely than women in general. (Social Exclusion Unit, 2004, quoting Psychiatric Morbidity Among Prisoners In England And Wales, 1998)
• The suicide rate in prisons is almost 15 times higher than in the general population: in 2002 the rate was 143 per 100,000 compared to 9 per 100,000 in the general population. (The National Service Framework For Mental Health: Five Years On, Department of Health, 2004; Samaritans Information Resource Pack, 2004)

 Mental Health Foundation 2013

So we know for when we are making our drama that mental health problems are a big issue for the prison population,  so we need to be aware when making our artefact that there are people who this could affect, and hence, we need to be aware and treat the issue carefully and respectfully.

I watched a couple of documentaries, one about people serving life in prison called Lifers (2012) which I feel showed me the moods and feelings of some individuals who are serving life in prison, the show really illustrated to me the futility they feel and the mundaneness of their lives and I can see how prison could be a negative environment for people with mental health conditions. I also watched two programmes on mental health problems, Bedlam (2013) and Don't Call Me Crazy (2013). Bedlam focuses on the people who are served by a psychiatric ward in London, and Don't Call Me Crazy focuses on young people in the Macguiness Unit in Manchester. The show shows two different sides of mental health, one looking at older people who live day to day with mental health problems and their management of this, and the other looking at younger people who are perhaps more fragile and less adept at dealing with their mental health problems.

Tomorrow we are meeting on Monday the 25th of November to start writing a storyboard for our piece, and using our individual research to develop our piece.