Traumascapes Arts Festival 2025 | The legacy of LAST: Arts-based understandings of trauma in mental health

Traumascapes X The Lancet Psychiatry

An evolving repository of creative articulations of survivorhood, published as the 2024 covers of The Lancet Psychiatry journal, the Living Archive of Survivorhood of Trauma (LAST) acts as a gateway for mental health researchers and practitioners to understand the lived experience of trauma. How might these and other arts-based expressions change how we conceptualise and respond to trauma? Join us for a panel discussion to explore this question.

https://www.traumascapes.org/last

​with Joan Marsh, Kam Bhui, Andrea Danese, Isaac Ouro-Gnao, Gavin Edmonds, chaired by Laura E. Fischer

Joan Marsh (she/her)

Joan Marsh is the Editor-in-Chief of The Lancet Psychiatry. She joined the Lancet group in November 2013 as Deputy Editor and helped to launch, then develop, the journal, being promoted to Editor-in-Chief in November 2021. Joan read Natural Sciences at Cambridge University, then completed a PhD in molecular biology. She worked as an editor with The Ciba/Novartis Foundation in London, editing and organizing their prestigious symposium series. Joan then spent several years in South-East Asia, returning to the UK in September 1999 and becoming an editor with John Wiley & Sons, commissioning books in the life sciences and medicine. Joan was on the Council of the European Association of Science Editors for 12 years, including six as President. She is now Chair of its Gender Policy Committee, with a particular interest in improving diversity in peer review. Joan is also an Associate Editor of European Science Editing.

Kam Bhui (he/him)

Kam Bhui is Professor of Psychiatry & Honorary Consultant Psychiatrist at the University of Oxford. He is also the Editor-in-Chief of the British Journal of Psychiatry and the Director of the World Psychiatric Association Collaborating Centre, among other roles. He is Principal Investigator of the ATTUNE Project, a multi-site study that explores young people’s experiences and understandings of mental health and adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) using varied arts-based methods.

Andrea Danese (he/him)

Andrea is a clinical scientist interested in childhood trauma and trauma-related psychopathology across the life-course. He is Professor of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry at King’s College London and Consultant Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist at the National and Specialist CAMHS Trauma, Anxiety, and Depression Clinic at the Maudsley Hospital (UK).

Isaac Ouro-Gnao (he/they)

Isaac Ouro-Gnao is a Togolese-British multidisciplinary artist and freelance journalist. He graduated from Canterbury Christ Church University with a Multimedia Journalism BA in 2015, and from Queen Mary University of London in Creative Arts and Mental Health MSc in 2022. His work is rooted in magical realism and Africanfuturism with a focus on themes of childhood, trauma, memory, and mental health across the forms of dance, theatre, film, essays, and poetry.

Gavin Edmonds (all pronouns)

Gavin Edmonds is an artist / artist-researcher whose work looks at how and why artists identify with other artists / artwork, and what processes are at work when this occurs. This developed from his own experience with an artwork, that lead to the subsequent recognition of PTSD, dating back to childhood. His work employs/builds upon the Freudian concept of (afterwardsness), which describes how an experience that is either incomprehensible or traumatic, is retained unconsciously then revivified at a later time in a different context.

Laura E. Fischer (she/they)

Laura E. Fischer is the Founder & CEO of Traumascapes. Laura’s award-winning art practice focuses on the reclaiming and rewriting of the sociocultural narrative of trauma on survivors’ own terms and her research explores the embodied experience of trauma and creative body-based approaches to healing. Laura is also Visiting Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology, and Neuroscience at King’s College London, Visiting Lecturer on the MASc Creative Health at UCL, Visiting Lecturer on the MSc Creative Arts and Mental Health at Queen Mary University of London, Visiting Lecturer on the MA Performance: Screen at Central Saint Martins, and she serves on the Data Monitoring and Ethics Committee for ATTUNE at the University of Oxford and the Editorial Advisory Board of The Lancet Psychiatry. Laura has published, presented, and exhibited internationally since 2005, and her artwork is held in the Central Saint Martins Museum Collection.

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Festival

The Traumascapes Arts Festival 2025 explores survivorhood through exhibition, film screenings, dance performances, talks, and workshops – all from the perspective of artists and researchers with lived experience of trauma.

See full programme here: https://traumascapes.org/arts-festival

About us

Traumascapes is a survivor-led organisation dedicated to changing the ecosystem of trauma and creating new horizons for survivors through art and science. Our work is bold, disruptive, and caring. It serves trauma survivors (individuals and groups who have been impacted by traumatic experiences such as, but not limited to, violence or abuse), persons and communities who support survivors, & professionals, organisations, and institutions who work on trauma and/or with survivors.

Accessibility

The venue is fully wheelchair accessible with step-free access throughout. An exhibition information pack is available with visual and conceptual descriptions of each artwork. A large-print pack is also available. All films screened as part of the festival include closed captions. Peer support workers and a quiet space with noise cancelling headphones and fidget toys are available on site (see the 'Caring for yourself and others' section below).

If you have any other access needs, please contact Julian and we will do our best to accommodate: julian@traumascapes.org.

Caring for yourself and your community

What to expect

The Traumascapes Arts Festival explores what it means to survive trauma, both individually and collectively. It includes the torment, the joy, and the messiness in between - all from the perspective of artists and researchers with lived experience of trauma. There are mentions/themes of colonialism, systemic violence, childhood and adulthood abuse (sexual, physical, emotional) and neglect, but there are no direct visual depictions of violence or abuse.​

Self and mutual care

It is important to hold space to explore trauma in order to raise awareness and to come together as a community to challenge the status quo and support collective healing. To create change, we must confront the reality of trauma - and this reality is a painful one.

But, as we do so, we must also counteract the normalisation of violence by fostering safety and protecting our wellbeing. As you explore the festival, we invite you to look after yourself and one another. Choose whether and when to engage, how much, and with whom. Step out when you need to and take care of yourself however feels right. Check-in with your peers too.

Support

• Peer support workers will be on site throughout the festival and you can chat to them any time. You can recognise them from their frog badges.

• A quiet space is located on the far end of the venue, on the right, where you can stay as long as you like, whenever you like.

• You can find noise-cancelling headphones, fidget toys, and art materials in the quiet space, which you can use at any time.

• Creative meditation and embodiment workshops are scheduled as part of the festival.

• An audio guide with grounding invitations is available for anyone to use as a way to explore the exhibition accompanied by some gentle grounding practices.

• For additional sources of support, please click here.

We may not be able to avoid all hurt and harm, but we can nurture safety and negotiate trauma with openness, mutual care, empathy, and grace. Thank you for being part of this.