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Brighton & Hove moves towards being a suicide safer community

Brighton-based charity will mark World Suicide Prevention Day on September 10 by providing free training to the local community.

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Grassroots Suicide Prevention will be holding a community event between 7 – 9.30 at Otherplace at the Basement, 24 Kensington St, Brighton, Brighton, BN1 4AJ celebrating the city’s progress towards internationally recognised suicide safer status. Guest speaker Tara Lal, will speak about making peace with grief and suicide.

There will also be a free screening of The Stranger on the Bridge film about a man’s search for the stranger who stopped him from jumping off Waterloo Bridge, followed by a panel discussion about suicide intervention chaired by Dr Tom Scanlon, Director of Public Health at Brighton and Hove City Council.

Funding for the event and the training has come through a grant from Brighton & Hove City Council’s public health team.

World Suicide Prevention Day is led by the International Association for Suicide Prevention (IASP) and the World Health Organisation. Efforts to prevent suicide have been celebrated on September 10 each year since 2003.

This year, the theme of the day is Reaching Out and Saving Lives.

The Suicide Safer Community initiative is led by LivingWorks, an international suicide intervention training social enterprise. They say Suicide-Safer Communities are passionate in their belief that suicide is preventable and that suicide prevention is a shared responsibility where every person from policy makers to individual community members has the potential to make a difference and save a life.

In acquiring an official Suicide-Safer Community designation, communities will be recognised for their efforts as leaders in formulating and implementing suicide prevention initiatives on a sustainable and ongoing basis over time.

Brighton & Hove’s application to be recognised in this way, if successful, will lead to the designation being awarded by a review committee of international and national experts, including LivingWorks.

Grassroots CEO Miranda Frost, says; “Brighton & Hove has a higher than average suicide rate and has done for many years.  In response to this issue Grassroots has been working hard with the Brighton & Hove Suicide Prevention Strategy Group partners across the city for several years to prevent suicide, and we are hopeful that the city will be recognised for its efforts next year by being awarded the Suicide Safer Community designation.  We will be giving an update on this work at our community event.”

Guest speaker Tara Lal is a full-time fire fighter with Fire and Rescue NSW based in Sydney. Ever since her brother’s suicide Tara held onto his diaries with the intention of doing something with them. Some twenty years after his death, the time finally seemed right and Tara began transcribing them. As the writing unfolded she began to feel an overwhelming sense that somehow by telling her and her brother’s story between them they could shine a light for others as they navigated their darkest days.

Tara says; “I aim to put the statistics around suicide in context by giving a personal perspective on its impact over a lifetime.  I also provide hope to those affected by suicide by highlighting how the destruction and pain of loss can be used to find growth and meaning.”

The event will also recognise the success of the charity’s Stay Alive suicide prevention app launched on World Suicide Prevention Day 2014 and already a double-award winner with nearly 6,000 downloads.

For more information about, Grassroots Suicide Prevention, click here:


Event: Grassroot Suicide Prevention community event with guest speaker Tara Lal

Where: Otherplace at the Basement, 24 Kensington St, Brighton, Brighton, BN1 4AJ

When: Thursday, September 10

Time: 7 – 9.30pm

Tickets: Free entry

 

 

Japanese mural for city centre

Influential Japanese street artist Lady Aiko will transform the alleyway between Black Lion Street and Bartholomew Square in Brighton city centre with a dramatic new mural.

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Lady Aiko will be creating the mural as part of the The Costume Games a five-day event in September being run by Brighton’s Japanese restaurant MOSHIMO in partnership with Brighton & Hove City Council as part of the Festival of Rugby celebrations. The mural will depict a scene from a classical Japanese play.

Lady Aiko is recognised in the contemporary street art world as among the most important artists to emerge this century, and her large-scale works, indoors and outdoors, can be seen in many cities, museums and art galleries all over the world.

In 2008, Aiko collaborated with Banksy, posing as a Japanese tourist and taking the now famous pictures of him doing unauthorised installations at MoMA , Brooklyn Museum, Natural History Museum and The Met.

In  2013, Louis Vuitton released an Aiko silk scarf as a collaborative accessory line of Foulards D’Artistes.

The Costume Games will be a city-wide event which will be inviting people to “dress up and play” over five days in the lead up to the opening weekend of Rugby World Cup 2015.

A team of leading film costume designers, who have between them created some of the most enduring and iconic screen characters in the history of film, will be on hand to help people “get into character” through costume, encouraging them to turn the city into a stage where they can become creative and explore different personas.

Nicholas Röhl co-owns MOSHIMO with Karl Jones and is Festival Director of The Costume Games.

He said: “The Costume Games is about people getting dressed up in costume – but we didn’t just want people to dress up, but parts of the city as well.”

“This is why we invited Lady Aiko to the city: so that she could “costume” walls with her daring and beautiful art.”

Lady Aiko will be one of the many artists who will be invited to the Old Steine on Wednesday September 16 to help “costume the gardens”, turning the Old Steine into the home of The Costume Games for the following five days.

Mr Röhl continued; “Lady Aiko will be creating live art on that day, and we’ll be inviting other artists and set designers to come along to ‘costume’ the Old Steine Gardens with articles of clothes and pieces of art.”

Lady Aiko’s residency in the City is being sponsored by Art Republic and Ink_d Gallery will be showing her work in an exhibition titled Edo City Girl which runs from September 11-20.

Councillor Emma Daniel, Chair of Brighton & Hove City Council’s Neighbourhood, Communities and Equalities Committee said; “We are looking forward to welcoming Lady Aiko to our city and are delighted that she will be leaving a lasting legacy with this stunning mural.”

 

Costume Games herald opening of Rugby World Cup

The Costume Games are the brainchild of MOSHIMO, Brighton’s popular Japanese restaurant, and will be taking place over five days (September 16 – 20), leading up to a weekend Costume Carnival which will be part of the opening weekend of the Rugby World Cup celebrations.

Costume Games

The games will be something genuinely different: people are being invited to Brighton to dress up and play over five days in September – and they will be helped to do so by a group of professionals behind some of the most enduring and iconic characters of the big screen.

Graham Churchyard, the costume special effects supervisor of Chris Nolan’s Batman trilogy and Marvel movies such as Avengers Assemble and Guardians of the Galaxy, has pulled together an extraordinary team that would only normally be found on the set of the biggest of Hollywood movies to help people dress up and get into character for The Costume Games.

Nicholas Röhl, co-owner of MOSHIMO and Festival Director of The Costume Games, said; “Our ambition is to transform the city of Brighton into one big stage where people can act out their fantasies through costume – all with the help of the some of the world’s leading costume designers.”

“We want to recreate the feeling we all had as children on discovering a dressing up box… we want to reignite the joy of getting into character – of becoming someone else, or someone you’d like to be, through costume.” 

Costume Games

Academy Award winner Lindy Hemming (Topsy Turvy), Vin Burnham (Batman, The Fifth Element), and Day Murch (Batman, Star Wars), will be just some of the costume creatives joining Graham Churchyard for what is being dubbed Costume Clinics, which people will be able to attend to create and develop their individual costumes.

The Batsuit, worn by Christian Bale in The Dark Knight, will be displayed at the Brighton Museum from August 17.

The home for the Costume Games will be in the prestigious Old Steine Pleasure Gardens, where a number of themed events will take place over the five days:

Costume Games

Wednesday September 16: Brighton residents will be invited to join local set designers and artists for a “flashmob” arts project, transforming the Old Steine into The Costume Gardens. Lady Aiko, a leading Japanese street artist, will be on hand, creating art to set the scene for the evening’s Japanese theme, with a MOSHIMO supper club, live music by the self-styled “Godmother of Japanese electronica”, and screenings of Japanese anime films.

Thursday, September 17: Sees the Costume Gardens transformed into a Las Vegas Casino where people will be invited to dress up en masse as Elvis to raise funds for the Martlets Charity.

Friday, September 18: Will have a 1980’s theme with screenings of two iconic movies, Fame and Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure.

Saturday, September 19: Sees the Costume Gardens become base camp for the Costume Carnival – a hive of action where people will visit the Costume Clinic to prepare their costumes for “flash mob” performances and stunts taking place all over the city. A Costume Awards party – free for all in costume – is planned for the evening.

Sunday, September 20: Is Sing-a-long-Sunday! The Costume Gardens becomes the stage for ever more histrionic delights as both children and adults sing-a-long to screenings of Mary Poppins, Sound of Music… and – yes – Frozen. The day’s events will feature a hundred children playing in a Suzuki violin concert.

Costume Games

The Costume Games is being produced by Brighton Japan, a festival owned by MOSHIMO. It was inspired by the festival’s ever-growing popularity of Cosplay where people dress up as their favourite online and film characters, and has been created with the desire to extend the invitation to dress up and play to everyone who enjoys dressing up.

For more information, click here:

 

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