ABSTRACT
This chapter provides on research with a group of art students, each of whom had a history of mental ill health. The research was funded by the Higher Education Academy and the University of the Arts, London, to explore the experiences of mentally ill students within higher Arts education. Students were recruited through the university counselling service, word of mouth, flyers, the Student Union, a student’s mental health support group, and general university advertising. Longitudinal, unstructured biographic narrative interviews were used, through which interviewees were encouraged to reflect, in an uninterrupted narrative flow, on their life, their art practice and their illness/health. The role of continua in the narratives appeared to perform an important function that was intrinsically linked to the experience of mental ill health. Artistic practice appeared to hold the other continua, and function as the point at which they could either converge, or, frustratingly, throw into relief the schisms and chasms of self, illness, and development.
