Middlesbrough’s flagship artistic centre, the Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art (MIMA), stages PS We Miss You, a hive of creative endeavours examining social isolation and loneliness, with an age-centric focus as part of Celebrating Age, a national initiative, and a local specificity as the project explores struggles in the Tees Valley during winter 2020 as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Loneliness and isolation were already a societal scourge in a pre-pandemic world, being exacerbated to incredible extents by the virus’ arrival and the measures taken nationally in an attempt to combat its destruction. This applies across all age groups but is especially pronounced among the elderly, with adverse effects on mental health becoming increasingly evident in a world slowly evolving to better understand such things, but also with significant and damning outcomes for physical health.
This is where MIMA’s value to the local area as a community nexus as much as a cultural one comes into play. PS We Miss You is targeted at the over 55s and is tooled to involve residents living in supported housing, independent living and homes for older people with local groups Thirteen, North Star Housing and MIMA’s long-term communities and groups.
The Institute has key pedigree in the area, having engaged with the first phase of Celebrating Age since 2017, channelling the contributions of artists, staff and volunteers to cultivate creativity with the town’s older residents and their carers.
The project will blend the digital and the socially distanced, in the form of workshops and activities such as “Doorstep Portraits” celebrating elders, family and caregivers in the local region, with the aim of crafting a constellation of perspectives and experiences from lockdown, the winter instalment of which was undoubtedly the most gruelling.
As anyone who has made a cursory scan of the news in the last 12 months will know, the scarring in our local communities and beyond will take many years to be truly understood. PS We Miss You represents an early intervention attempting to calibrate the many angles of this story while the memories remain shockingly fresh, with a deeply remedial motivation behind its grassroots, communitarian agenda, and a collaborative vitality between cultural and community institutions highlighting the importance of building connections across spheres which are typically too far removed.
The huge role of art in providing a voice and positively moulding society, especially in times of hardship, cannot be overstated and is a critical tent of MIMA’s mission statement.
For further information, head to visitmima.com.
