ABSTRACT
Schools are important spaces for mental health promotion, prevention and early intervention. This chapter describes a study that used mural art created by young people to translate knowledge about first episode psychosis and pathways to mental healthcare. Our interest was in gauging reactions to the mural by using forms of expression via a ‘graffiti wall’ medium. A number of ‘graffiti walls’, blank scrolls of paper positioned near the mural, were created for secondary students to record their reactions to the mural. Cognitive and affective reactions to viewing and engaging with the mural installation were collected. Over 600 textual and visual responses were recorded on the walls across multiple school settings. Our analysis was inspired by new materialism theory, which helped us to explicate the role played by the graffiti walls as non-human actors within mural-wall-respondent assemblages. We used an interpretive thematic analysis, attending to the relational connections, affective forces and agential capacities generated within mural-wall-respondent assemblages. The graffiti wall afforded diverse agential capacities both inwards, in the form of affective forces and proliferating interpretations of the work, and outwards, in the form of creating relational connections between the artists and the students, and among the students themselves. Implications for youth-centred education and mental health awareness are discussed.
