Manchester artists launch album for mental health charity
Article published: Tuesday, February 14th 2012
Musicians from Manchester’s past and present have joined together to launch an album in aid of a mental health charity which aims to reduce suicides among young men.
Photograph: Mike Gatiss
Compiled by DJ Dave Haslam, the album Thirty One features tracks from 31 artists in a reflection of new and classic acts from the post-punk period onward. Contributors include diverse a range of artists from Elbow, the Beating Wing Orchestra, Noel Gallagher and up-and-coming Middleton blues soul singer JP Cooper.
All profits are to go to the Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM) to help raise funds to extend the organisation’s free and confidential national helpline service from four to seven nights every week. Originally founded as a Department of Health pilot in 1997, CALM registered as a charity in 2006 with the support of the late Tony Wilson and provides free and confidential advice and support to people with mental health problems.
Although the helpline is open to all in the UK the charity’s primary focus is on reducing deaths among young men, with suicide being the leading cause of death in 2009 for males under the age of 35. Men accounted for three quarters of deaths from suicide in 2010 and organisers said one of the reasons why a charity album was chosen to raise awareness was because of faith in music’s power to help break down societal barriers against masculine expression of emotion.
Jez Kerr. Photograph: Mike Gatiss
CALM director Jane Powell said she hoped the launch could contribute to “make a change in society” in aiding men “to talk about things and not bottle up and think you’re invulnerable”. Haslam affirmed this, explaining to MULE his belief music could be “an escape and a lifeline” for young men and provide a way for people to “analyse and think about their lives.”
A Certain Ratio bassist and vocalist and Thirty One contributor Jez Kerr said he was “really chuffed” to be involved and argued that mental health support was “even more necessary now” given “all the cutbacks in the NHS”. Kerr claimed mental health often seemed to be “pushed to the back”, adding “it’s not as obvious as a broken leg, so it tends to get forgotten. But people realise it’s probably more important and more dangerous than a broken leg.”
The initiative was organised by the Factory Foundation, a project established in 2003 to support disadvantaged young people in Manchester through music. Founder Esther O’Callaghan told MULE how she had been motivated to organise the project after two family members had died from suicide, and said CALM’s helpline, through providing people with someone to speak with, “saves lives”.
While she said she wanted to preserve the original spirit of Factory Records, O’Callaghan warned that “cities have this awful habit of turning something really forward thinking into something retrospective” and said the Foundation’s work was “more about new music, young people, and that’s where Thirty One was born from.”
“Music’s the one thing that’s inherent in all of us,” said O’Callaghan, “of all the arts it seems to be the one that we feel and respond to and I think to use that to get an important message across is an invaluable thing.”
Richard Goulding
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