Big Fish Big Pond

Big Fish Big Pond, who are the project owners, have lived-in experience of issues surrounding mental health and meaningful work. Their project looks to create a documentary style film that highlights the relationship between unmeaningful work and mental health amongst residents in Walworth. The aim is to find correlations between work and wellbeing, understand if people would rather be unemployed than work a job they do not see a future in and general thoughts and feelings around BAME work place opportunities. Through interviews of the participants, the responses will be embedded in the documentary to help personify this issue within the borough of Southwark.

Why did you think your project was important to address health and wellbeing in your community?
The project intersects work and mental health - and these are two key areas that impact many young people specifically those from ethnic minorities. The project was important given it identified a gap as it aimed to provide young people the platform to talk about their experiences of employment. This ranged from being in jobs the young people enjoyed versues, potentially, jobs they did not enjoy.

What's something that's surprised you in this process?
I learnt alot during this process including that mental health is different for everybody. We knew this before but people really do require support in many different ways in order to be the best version of themselves. I also learnt some other key things such as: - How people are working, and important the types of jobs young people are engaging in. - We learnt about the correlation of the role you do and your mental health. Some jobs were seen as simply paying the bills and this was more the case for the 18-20 year olds.

What change would you like to see so that more people can be empowered to make decisions on the issues that affect them?
We learnt that young people were really open and keen to talk about their mental health including their hopes of supporting others. This is something that did take me by suprise... as there is an assumption that mental health is spoken of in specific communities and groups. Actually people are very open and would like to support and help others. I'd love to see more young people inspired to continue talking about their experiences and be able to draw on their lived journies as a source of motivation. Many of the young people who worked on this project have been able to secure employment else where which has been really positive.