22nd January - 21st April 2025

The Art of Mental Stealth… a comic approach was a project that thought creatively about how to deliver mental health messaging and interventions for young people in Nottingham, by nurturing creative skills in visual storytelling as a bridge to self-awareness, expression and shared understanding.

The project kickstarted a city-wide conversation exploring intersections between comics/graphic novels and mental health interventions, the therapeutic potential of creation, and how young artists are already merging these worlds.

In this exhibition the team document their discussions and showcase work from creative projects around Nottingham, including:

• Matthew Gill, Senior Lecturer at NTU and founder of Nottingham based zine and print studio RawPrint
• Lecturer at NTU, Illustrator and fine artist specialising in graphic novels Madeline Burt
• Professor Heike Bartel at UoN passionate about mental health and arts-based training tools
• Ethan and Naomi Sacks, authors of 4 issue graphic horror mini-series A Haunted Girl inspired by Naomi’s battle with depression
• Casey Soma, a social entrepreneur and multi-media artist and founder of Mad Truth
• The Centre for Social Future's project with Aardman What's Up With Everyone?
• Artist Shamila Chady and young people from NEST a unique educational provision for refugee and asylum seeking young people
• Liam Mills, a fiction, games and graphic novel writer at Sealight studios
• Ali Jeffries, artist passionate about mental health

Making Connections

In this project Melanie Wheeler (Ignite! Community Programmes Lead) and Liam Mills (Sealight studios, lead artist) worked with Outburst (16-21 LGBTQ+ youth group at Base 51) and graphics students from NTU Confetti Institute of Creative Technologies, in collaboration with University of Nottingham to design, develop and create a graphic novel to  explore the theme of mental health. The project builds directly from ‘The Art of Mental Stealth… a comic approach’.

In this exhibition the team document the creative process of developing a comic on the topic of mental health and what was involved in translating the story and words provided by young people at Outburst into illustrated pages by graphics students at Confetti.

Join the team at the launch event:

Wednesday 22nd January, 5pm - 7pm

More information can be found here

More information from

Joanna Lockwood, project lead of The Art of Mental Stealth and Senior Research Fellow at the University of Nottingham specialising in young people's mental health