083954/Z/07/Z: Do Not Adjust Your Mind

Project description:

Film maker and trainee psychotherapist Tom Cotton and film producer Natasha Dack will work with project advisor Professor Del Loewenthal, subject leader for psychotherapy, Roehampton University, to research radical psychotherapist R. D. Laing's Mingsley Hall experimental community, where psychotherapists and schizophrenic patients lived together without conventional patient/doctor boundaries. Although disbanded thirty seven years ago, Laing's findings from Kingsley Hall presented a major challenge to psychiatric orthodoxy and arguably, in light of proposed government reforms of the 1983 mental health act, are more important today than ever. The team's research will take the form of extensive interviews with ex-Kingsley Hall participants, as well as Laing's contemporaries from both psychotherapy and the psychiatric establishment. This material will then be collated, analysed and presented in the form of a screenplay dramatising the events of Kingsley Hall, together with material for an accompanying documentary and book.

Organisation:

Tigerlily Films

Grant type:

Small Arts Awards

Financial year:

2006/2007