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Tragic artists and their all-consuming passions

Does having a debilitating disease help or hinder creative genius?

The cures and demons of sleep paralysis

Discover the murky past of sleep paralysis, the terrifying disorder once associated with demonic possession

How writing helps me manage schizophrenia

The politics and power of audio-description

Traditional theatre audio-description often lets down artists and audiences. But, done well, it has the potential to be a force for creativity as well as accessibility.

Is fake news killing fictive art?

Parafictional artists create projects where the imaginary interacts with real life. But the growth of so-called ‘fake news’ is providing a new challenge.

How to play with people who are better than you

It’s frustrating to lose a game to the same player every time. But help is at hand. Discover the ways you can make a game respond dynamically to participants so everyone has a chance of winning.

Picturing mental health

Ron Hampshire created artworks while resident at Netherne psychiatric hospital. What can we learn from them?

Why make-believe matters

Michael Rosen explores the point of play, and reveals why we should all do a little more daydreaming.

Ways appear

While his sense of body shame meant the personal side of his life was unfulfilled, Chris’s career was rewarding. His own childhood experiences gave him profound empathy for the children he worked with.

Celebrating our soft toys

After cuddling a teddy bear cured her insomnia, Elspeth Wilson was inspired to speak to four other autistic and disabled adults, who praise the roles soft toys play in their lives.

Wonder years

The confusion and secrecy surrounding his condition seriously affected Chris’s mental health, blighting his teenage years. But somehow he began to hope and plan for the future.

The amateur silversmith

It started as hobby and soon became a passion. Geraldine Holden tells us where the art and science of silver unite.

Another way to listen

Background noise is something we often try to ignore. Adjoa Wiredu explores what happens if we intentionally choose to tune in.

Acting, disableism and inclusive theatre

Deaf theatre director Jenny Sealey discusses inclusivity, community and the resilience of disabled actors.

Autistic togetherness during lockdown

While lockdown has presented autistic people with greater challenges than life pre-COVID, many have found strength and comfort in the situation. Autistic writer and performer Kate Fox explains how.

Rag mags and monthly issues: Five period zines to stop you seeing red

Using humour, personal experience and political activism to explore the bloody reality of menstruation.

How to design an HIV awareness campaign

Using carefully crafted, colourful graphics is one public health team’s creative approach.

Reversing the psychiatric gaze

Nineteenth-century psychiatrists were keen to categorise their patients’ illnesses reductively – by their physical appearance. But we can see a far more complex picture of mental distress, revealed by those patients able to express their inner worlds in art.

Rose Mackenberg’s deceptive activism

Discover how a New York private investigator became part of Houdini’s mission to expose the fraudulent mediums making money from their vulnerable, grieving clients.

Can isolation lead to manipulation?

Military-funded researchers wanted to know if isolation techniques could facilitate brainwashing. One neuroscientist suggested that it might improve our own control over our minds.

Crime drama and the realistic cadaver

Today we are accustomed to the increasingly realistic look of dead bodies in on-screen dramas. Special-effects expert Hildegunn M S Traa reveals how crime and morgue scenes reflect the social idea of death.

Memory

A memory is just the leftover carcass of your mind's creative metabolisation of the past.

Digitising Audrey

Building digital images of what Audrey created means that her work can be frozen in time – for the digital version, at least, the process of decay is halted, and any number of people can view it without the risk of damaging it.

Restoring disorder to ‘The Book of Disquiet’

Printer Tim Hopkins explains what making an extraordinary new edition of Fernando Pessoa’s book revealed about both the text and the mind.

Pum Dunbar’s living lessons

Read the ‘legends’ that give insight into Pum Dunbar’s creative process while producing her recent series of collages.