With your help we can make sure people with mental health issues won’t be ‘out of sight’ this October!

The one-of-a-kind Out of Sight Out of Mind art exhibition has run for 13 years, enabling hundreds of people with mental health issues to have their voices heard using art, each October. It has become the biggest mental health exhibition in Scotland. It is organised by people with experience of mental health issues for people with mental health issues.

While we seek longer term support, we need your help to ensure that a 14th Out of Sight Out of Mind happens in 2026 in some form.

A full year of Out of Sight Out of Mind costs a lot more, however £10,000 will enable:

• a three-week long art event, in October 2026, during the Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival

• a programme of art and events, for people with mental health issues

• planning and delivery by people who have mental health issues

• platforming the art and voices of people who have mental health issues

• it to be accessible, welcoming and as awesome as usual

If you don’t donate, that’s no problem! If you’d like to share the campaign, then thanks!

Why we need help now

Last year, funding for the exhibition ended, despite the growing success of the project. In 2025, 394 people with mental health issues showed artworks and over 2600 people visited the exhibition.

Out of Sight Out of Mind is a unique grassroots project. It was started in 2013 by a group of people with mental health issues who wanted to have their say using the arts. It is still led by this group, offering them a focus year-round, meaningful power and influence, and certainty in uncertain times. It is now a growing open call exhibition offering hundreds of people with mental health issues a way to express themselves using art, a safe and dependable space enabling their voices to be heard and seen together and what has become a community.

The exhibition is accessible, addresses power imbalances and ensures equality of voice. As well as mental health issues, people involved are often marginalised and disadvantaged through physical ill health, neurodiversity, disability, not being from Scotland, having an ethnic minority background, their social or economic background, gender identity struggles and other issues. The Planning Group, who direct and organise the exhibition on a voluntary basis, say about the exhibition:

‘It is welcoming, diverse, inclusive, accessible, accommodating and flexible. It is non-hierarchical, non-judgemental, validating and free from conflicts of interest.’

The project is facilitated by CAPS Independent Advocacy, who exist to ensure that people who are marginalised are heard. CAPS are currently seeking funding to ensure a future for the exhibition; however, this takes time, and without your help we can’t hold an exhibition this October.

What we are looking for

We are asking for your help to ensure that, as they have done for the last 13 years, the Out of Sight Out of Mind community can come together in 2026. Given the timescales, it may not look exactly like previous exhibitions. However, with enough funds we can hold an Out of Sight Out of Mind 2026 that is:

• a three-week long art event, in October, during the Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival

• a programme of art and events

• planned and delivered by people who have mental health issues

• platforming the art and voices of people who have mental health issues

• accessible, welcoming and as awesome as usual

Money raised will be used for costs of organising and holding the exhibition and the events, these included: the venue, materials, running, staff and volunteer costs, PR etc.

More than an exhibition

Out of Sight Out of Mind exhibition means different things to different people. People have told us that it improves their wellbeing, gives them a voice, helps them feel seen, a sense of belonging, a community, a way to contribute meaningfully, leads to reduced isolation, gives a focus and more.

One exhibitor and organiser of the exhibition said:

‘This exhibition doesn’t just support artists — it saves lives. It saved mine.’

‘this exhibition gives me a voice in a world where I often feel voiceless. It’s not just about creating or showing work — it’s about being heard. OOSOOM gives space to the kind of expression that can’t be forced into neat sentences or diagnoses. Here, I don’t need to explain myself in ways I can’t. Through art, I speak. Through this exhibition, I am understood'.

'Nowhere else have I found a community like this. Nowhere else have I felt so wholly accepted. Here, I have friends. A mad, loving family.’

The exhibition also means so much to the thousands of visitors who flock to see it each year. Audiences have said:

'Thank you for being so brave and sharing your stories. We need these brave souls to shout out for the rest of us'.

'OOSOOM is a rare collective, artistic expression of hope and of challenging norms and stigma around mental health'.

'This is an amazing, interesting and thought-provoking exhibition. We enjoyed that a lot. Gives you good insight into other people, what they go through and how art helps them deal with it. It’s very inspiring and beautiful. Loved it and we really hope it will be back next year'.

'When was the last time you felt something so hard you burst out into tears? This exhibition has done just that. I am touched and deeply moved. The raw pain and the joy is a privilege to get to be part of. Mental health issues affect us all'.

'Knocks the socks off Andy Goldsworthy! It’s colourful, imaginative, personal, quirky (some), varied and diverse'.

Will you help people with mental health issues have their voices heard through art?

All donations will all go towards Out of Sight Out of Mind project.

Read more about what the exhibition means to people: https://www.outofsightoutofmind.scot/what-does-it-mean-to-you-2025

Further information:

https://www.outofsightoutofmind.scot/

https://capsadvocacy.org/