Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival Highland

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Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival Highland

Highland community groups join together each year for the Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival (SMHAF).

SMHAF Highland is a Scottish Charitable Incorporated Organisation SC054677

18/10/2026

Open Call – Artist/Designer needed!

The Highlands Dream Bank is seeking a designer to create a pull-up banner introducing the project at exhibitions, community events, workshops and other public engagement activities.

The pull-up banner will be visually striking and introduce the Highlands Dream Bank to members of the public, encouraging curiosity, conversation and participation.

This artwork, or elements from it, will also be used for wider branding on publicity materials (e.g. flyers and social media).

Please submit a single PDF containing up to five images of previous work that best represent your design practice. The PDF may include brief captions or project titles to provide context for each image
Please do not create a design proposal for this commission at this stage. We are selecting a designer based on the quality, creativity and suitability of their existing work.

The selected designer will then be commissioned to work with the Highlands Dream Bank team to develop the final pull-up banner.

Payment: £300

Background
The Highlands Dream Bank is a new community project led by the Highlands Psychoanalytic Collective and UHI Inverness working in collaboration with SMHAF Highland and Creativity In Care. It will explore what people across the Highlands are dreaming about. It is a creative way to bring people together to share what psychoanalyst Christopher Bollas called ‘the unthought known’. Sharing dreams together can build connection, creativity and resilience. The Highlands' distinctive geography, climate, culture, and dispersed communities might also generate powerful emotional and symbolic landscapes.

Highlands Dream Bank will collect, collate, and analyse dreams submitted from across the region to identify patterns of underlying shared meaning. These patterns/themes will then be used by collaborating artists in creative works to capture and reflect back salient and recurring contents of dreams. The project will culminate in a public archive, exhibitions, community events, written outputs, and a research report informing health, education, and cultural sectors.

Deadline Sunday 25th October 2026

Please send submissions and any queries to: [email protected]

The Highlands Dream Bank is part of a wider mental health collaboration involving SMHAF Highland, Highlands Psychoanalytic Collective, UHI Inverness and Creativity In Care, supported through the Highland Third Sector Interface Communities Mental Health & Wellbeing Fund for Adults.

16/10/2026

We're delighted that our "Reflections" art exhibition is now on display at The Bike Shed - Events Venue/Coffee House (Grant Street, Merkinch, Inverness) so please pop in!
Opening times:
Thursday 10am - 12 noon
Friday 10am - 12 noon and 5.30pm - 9pm
Saturday 10am - 12 noon

Discover works by folks attending sessions through Inverness Openarts, Rag Tag n Textile (Skye), Home-Start Caithness and Creativity In Care. Celebrating the 20th Anniversary of the Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival, the Reflections theme has been very popular this year.

The exhibitions in Inverness at the Bike Shed and Eden Court will be here until the end of October and then many of the artworks will go up to Thurso Art Gallery for November/December.

The Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival Highland is grateful to have received funding from the Highland Third Sector Interface Communities Mental Health and Wellbeing Fund for Adults, and the Caithness & North Sutherland Fund.

14/10/2026

🧶 Let's talk about feelings!

As part of the Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival Highland Discovery College is sharing our Feelings Scarf Project at Eden Court Theatre and Cinema, from now until 28th October. After that the exhibition will travel north to Thurso, Caithness where you can participate in the project throughout November and December.

We all have feelings, but sometimes finding the right words to explain them can be tricky.

Using the feelings wheel, we're inviting people to pick out the words that describe how they're feeling and write them down. We'll then bring everyone's words together in colours, and add them to our feelings scarf, with each one becoming part of of the scarf.

There's no right or wrong feeling, and you don't need to have it all figured out. Sometimes, just taking a moment to check in with yourself can make a difference.

The scarf will be part of a bigger project in the new year, bringing together lots of different feelings, experiences and stories. 🧣

Come along, have a look at the exhibition and add your words to the scarf. We'd love you to be part of it!

13/10/2026

A huge thank you to our collaborative friends at Centred Scot for showcasing these fabulous Highland artists as part of this year’s festival.

We’re delighted to help provide a platform for their incredible creativity and talent, with the artwork being auctioned to raise vital funds for Centred Scotland and support its valuable work across the Highlands

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1Ehmkn8r5Z/

11/10/2026

Highland Mindfulness Group
Free Sessions in Invergordon (Ross Sutherland Rugby Club, Castle Avenue, IV18 0AZ)

Wednesday 14th October 2026 from 10.30am – 12 noon with Diana Woodman
What’s going on?
Taking time for ourselves, exploring how we really are and allowing ourselves to pause, reflect and soothe.
Using the breath and simple meditations, we will explore ways to calm, to slow down and to rekindle appreciation of who we are and how we live our lives.

Tuesday 27th October 2026 from 6.45pm – 8pm with Val Gale
Mindfulness Taster
Busy rushing around? Why not stop and find out if mindfulness might help you step out and find a space to rest and restore? Learn more about mindfulness in this taster session!

Each session is standalone so you can book one or both.
Beginners welcome!
Over 18s only. Funded by HOPE Invergordon.
To book your free place, please contact Daniel (admin) via [email protected]

Part of the Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival Highland

10/10/2026

🌎 Celebrating World Mental Health Day today (10 October) and this year's theme "Lived experiences heard: real voices, real change"

Thanks to everyone who came along yesterday for the "Gathering" to launch the 2026 SMHAF Highland exhibition at Eden Court and to all the artists who have contributed their work.
Every year the SMHAF Highland exhibitions offer a platform for people with lived experience to be seen, heard and celebrated. This year's festival theme "Reflections" has resulted in a wide range of thought-provoking artworks in many different media forms showcasing the importance of arts in mental health recovery and wellbeing.

Many of the artworks have been created through workshops & local groups including Arts in Nature, Green Tree Arts Studio, Creativity In Care, Brora Learning Zone, Inverness Openarts, Mikeysline, The Discovery College, Skye and Lochalsh Mental Health Association and Rag Tag n Textile on Skye.
Some have been submitted by individual artists working alone - and we are working on facilitating a new network of artists across the Highlands & Islands coming soon to help build connections.

Many thanks to every single artist who has taken part this year and offered their own unique interpretation of the theme.
Stay tuned to our channels to see some more of the stories from these truly unique artworks. Let their voices ripple out around the Highlands and beyond. Please help us to spread the word.

Let us know your "Reflections" -
⭐️ You can leave your comments in the visitors' book on the second floor at Eden Court.
⭐️ Or fill in a postcard based on the Feelings Wheel and pop it into the silver box by the visitors' book.
⭐️ Why not take a picture of something from the exhibition which has moved you and pop it into a comment below?!

Many of the unique artworks are for sale - simply enquire at the box office if you wish to purchase something.

Huge thanks to Donna Murray for curating the exhibitions alongside Catherine with help from Charlotte, Monette, Trish and Nicola, and to Eden Court Theatre and Cinema for hosting.

Viewing:
The art exhibition at Eden Court runs until Wednesday 28th October 2026 in the Stalls Gallery on the 1st floor and the 1st Circle Gallery on the 2nd floor. Eden Court is open Mon-Tue from 4pm, Wed-Sun from 11am.
A sister exhibition will be running in the Bike Shed (Grant Street, Merkinch, Inverness) from mid to end October.
The SMHAF Highland exhibition will then tour to Thurso Art Gallery in November.

SMHAF Highland is grateful to have received funding from the Highland Communities Mental Health & Wellbeing Fund for Adults from Highland Third Sector Interface and the Scottish Government, as well as the Caithness & North Sutherland Fund.

09/10/2026

What are the Highlands dreaming about? We all dream, although we don't always remember them. We dream about all sorts of things. People you know, houses that seem familiar but also strange. Animals, journeys, running, flying.

Psychoanalysis has always been fascinated by dreams because they remind us that our minds are much bigger, stranger and more creative than our conscious thoughts alone. We each carry a rich and complicated inner world that other people mostly never see.

Research during periods of enormous shared experience, for example the Covid lockdowns, found traces of collective anxiety, isolation and upheaval appearing in people’s dreams.

The Highlands Dream Bank is a new psychoanalytic, community and research project from Highlands Psychoanalytic Collective, working in partnership with Dr Marc Archer at UHI Inverness.

We’ll be inviting people across the Highlands to anonymously give us their dreams. Over time, we’ll explore what emerges. How does landscape enter our dreams? Do the sea, weather, mountains, distance and darkness find their way in? What about belonging and isolation? Work, family, change, loss, nature, anxiety, home? We're curious whether distinctly Highland patterns will emerge.

The Dream Bank is part of a wider mental health collaboration led by Creativity In Care alongside Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival Highland and supported through the Highland Third Sector Interface Communities Mental Health & Wellbeing Fund for Adults.

And we don't want the dreams simply to disappear into a research database.
We want to playfully bring them back into the community through Dream Cafés, Social Dreaming events, art and writing, a psychoanalytic dream film night, exhibitions and conversations, a Dream Tent at Belladrum Tartan Heart Festival in 2027.
A growing, collective portrait of the inner life of the Highlands.

Watch this dream space for more information or get in touch: [email protected]

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07/10/2026

We are delighted to launch our 2026 art exhibition on the theme 'Reflections' celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival.

You are warmly invited to our informal 'Gathering' on Friday 9th October 2026 at Eden Court Theatre and Cinema (Inverness).
Feel free to drop in any time between 1pm and 3pm for teas/coffees and a chat.
Join us in the Stalls Gallery on the first floor where you can explore the exhibition which is featured across both the first and second floors.

The exhibition celebrates the importance of arts in mental health recovery and wellbeing. This year's theme has inspired many creative artworks from established artists and from people creating art for the first time.
Some of the unique artworks are for sale.

There's some fabulous artwork created through workshops and groups involving Rag Tag n Textile in Skye, Arts in Nature, Mikeysline, Creativity In Care, Green Tree Arts Studio, Am Fasgadh (Skye and Lochalsh Mental Health Association), Inverness Openarts, Brora Learning Zone, Centred Scot / The Discovery College and much more.

Viewing:
The art exhibition at Eden Court runs until Wednesday 28th October 2026 in the Stalls Gallery on the 1st floor and the 1st Circle Gallery on the 2nd floor. Eden Court is open Mon-Tue from 4pm, Wed-Sun from 11am.

A sister exhibition will be running in the Bike Shed (Grant Street, Merkinch, Inverness) from mid to end October.
The SMHAF Highland exhibition will then tour to Thurso Art Gallery in November.

SMHAF Highland is grateful to have received funding from the Highland Communities Mental Health & Wellbeing Fund for Adults from Highland Third Sector Interface and the Scottish Government, as well as the Caithness & North Sutherland Fund.

06/10/2026

Join Creativity In Care for a series of 4 free Gelli Plate Printing Workshops on this year's Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival Highland theme -'Reflections'

All materials are provided and you don't need any experience.

Held at the Community Room, Thurso Library.
2-4 pm, see the flyer for dates.

Email - [email protected] to book your space.

Address

Inverness

Website

https://smhafhighland.co.uk/

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