Mental Health Arts is a year-round arts programme led by the Mental Health Foundation Scotland, built around the annual Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival (SMHAF). Established in 2007, the festival is one of the largest of its kind in the world and among Scotland's most diverse cultural events, covering everything from music, film and visual art to theatre, dance, and literature.
Written and performed by Jo Mango, commissioned for the 2026 Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival.
Recorded to tape and mixed by Jo Mango
Cover photo – Flannery O’Kafka
Lyrics:
In ‘94 I lay on the floors
Of all the churches
Where God knocked us down
I counted tiles on the ceiling
While our parents lay weeping
And wondered what love I had found
Is she the before
That I am after?
Later I felt myself twisting and turning
A wrestling below the surface
While the faithful clapped their hands
The prophet stopped the service
To tell me I’d be blind
And while I cried
The choir sang
‘We are the before
The ever after
We are the before
The ever after’
Those were the days before the stories broke
Did they lay me out cold or was I awoken?
Those were the ways that some things broke
They fell away slow but they left us open
And now there’s a phantom underneath the lake
Her words unspoken
If she’s the before
Am I the after?
We threw our phones into the water
Some kind of fit of piety?
I don’t remember
But I call it now to talk to her – my inner daughter
My body’s a stone but my voice is tender
As I say…
You are the before
I am here ever after
You are the before
And I am here
20 Oct 2026
1. Raising Ourselves (Tape Version)
Written and performed by Jo Mango, commissioned for the 2026 Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival.
Recorded to tape and mixed by Jo Mango
Cover photo – Flannery O’Kafka
Lyrics:
Raising Ourselves
There’s a windowpane
Between this world and a dark land out in the snow
Reflected on the glass
Where everything we know is out there laying on the grass
We’re trying so hard to grow
Caught between the future and the past
We are a forest planted scattered
Landed awkward, reaching tall
So little help with all the wreckage
Building everything from something within
That tries to dawn despite it all
We’re raising ourselves
We’re raising ourselves
We’re raising ourselves
We’re raising ourselves
There’s a windowpane
Between my voice and you
A fragile layer the waves - my words - can travel through
A vision on the glass
Of a future
Not that past
We are a forest planted scattered
Landed awkward, reaching tall
So little help with all the wreckage
Building everything from something within
That tries to dawn despite it all
We’re raising ourselves
We’re raising ourselves
We’re raising ourselves
We’re raising ourselves
We’ve sheltered in books
By the sea as it courses
We’ve survived in the songs
And the eyes of the horses
Through the love of our dogs
And writing it down
Our feet on the ground
We’re speaking it aloud
There’s a windowpane
26 Oct 2024
Invisible M*ther
Invisible M*ther is a collaborative piece by Rebecca Livesey-Wright and Indra Wilson, commissioned by the Mental Health Foundation for the 2024 Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival.
The piece uses polyvocal writing techniques to to visibilise hidden maternal narratives whilst affording an element of anonymity important for preserving a safe space for both ourselves and those who are adjacent to our stories.
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