The boss of Brighton Festival and Dome is developing a set of programmes to help people with mental health issues.

Andrew Comben is one of 12 Happiness Champions appointed by Brighton and Hove City Council to helm its new Happiness and Wellbeing strategy.

As Happiness Champion for arts and culture, Mr Comben wants to destigmatise the conversation surrounding mental health and encourage vulnerable people to interact with the arts.  

Mr Comben said: “Arts and culture has a role to play in people’s lives beyond the essential entertainment value that they offer.

“Art can be both stunning and life-changing in one moment and then something that can help people maintain a connection to the world and their own equilibrium.”

The Happiness and Wellbeing strategy was introduced in October to help people with mental illness forge connections and play an active role in the community.

With the support of health professionals, Brighton Dome will design programmes that are directly plugged into the strategy and promote its core values.

This will introduce sufferers of severe mental health to a variety of visual art, theatre, dance, and classical and contemporary music.

Mr Comben said: “I want to take the arts to people who might not otherwise be engaged with them, particularly to people who have difficulties and challenges to overcome, whether it’s people in care homes who have dementia or young people at risk of offending.”

Brighton Dome will also expand its series of Creative Learning programmes, comprised of workshops, courses and performances that help people find purpose and develop new skills.

A taster of these performances was shown at this year’s Brighton Festival when theatre company Invisible Flock mapped 550 people’s joyful memories in an interactive installation called Bring the Happy.

Alongside his experience in arts administration, Mr Comben has worked with suicide charities and one of his aims as Happiness Champion is to help people talk about their feelings.

He said: “We want to see everyone in the city emotionally resilient in a way that we know they’re not.

“One of the key challenges of the strategy is to make it possible to talk about, what are for many people, very close personal and emotional issues, and I believe we can do that in the arts."

Mr Comben also believes in engaging with artists who have struggled with their own mental health and he sees role models in people like Stephen Fry and musician Cat Power.

He said: “Artists are often accessing the parts of themselves that the rest of us don’t so frequently and I think they have a huge amount to offer with how to deal and grapple with your thoughts and feelings.

“They certainly don’t have all the answers but we can learn a lot from their work, and derive a huge amount of pleasure and sometimes solace from it.”

Read about Brighton Dome’s Creative Learning programmes at www.brightondome.org/join_in/creative_learning/ and the Happiness and Wellbeing strategy at www.brighton-hove.gov.uk/content/health-and-social-care/health-and-wellbeing/our-mental-health-and-wellbeing-strategy.