Healing Words 2019 - Simon Inc

October 4th is National Poetry Day in the UK.

To mark that event, The Advocacy Project hold a poetry competition featuring poems written by people who have experienced mental health issues about their experiences around their mental health. 2019 marked the second time the competition had been held, and we were delighted to be offered the opportunity to design the exhibition.

The competition received 600 entries, of which almost 500 were to be displayed in a 4 day exhibition in Paternoster Square in front of Saint Paul’s Cathedral. The display had to be visually arresting, cost-effective, and portable, so that The Advocacy Project could display it in other venues around the country over the course of the following year.

Our solution included both pull-up banners and hanging banners, printed double sided. We arranged the brightly coloured banners within 8 connected gazebos to create a vibrant, immersive environment within which visitors could lose themselves in a world of poetry.

The exhibition was launched at an event in the City, where winning entries in various categories were displayed and read aloud, and the writers of the winning poems were celebrated and received their awards.

The judges, who all spoke at the event, included actress and screenwriter Joanna Scanlan, poets novelist and artist Ben Okri, vice president of Business in the Community and former Special Adviser to The Prince’s Charities Dame Julia Cleverdon, jazz singer Gill Manly, poet and writer Shaniqua Benjamin, among others.