Becoming Forest is the community-oriented healing project focusing on mental health issues accelerated by Covid-19. Drawing upon Franz Fanon’s seminal observation on the relationship between colonial oppression/violence and mental illness, Becoming Forest conceptualises collective healing as performing justice. It aims to build the solidarity circle of care specifically for Southeast and East Asian refugees and precarious migrants.
Articulating collective healing as migrant justice practice, the participatory process of the project tests out the concept of ‘folk healing’, which emphasises participants’ cultural common grounds as a critical healing factor and weighs on equally both verbal and nonverbal communications. The folk healing approach also counters the limitations of western psychotherapy based on individualised pathologisation, rather than interrogating socio-structural issues around one’s mental status, and overcomes patient-healer binary.
Seeing collective healing as a slow, empathetic and ecological process, Becoming Forest positions nature and time as key healers. Going over the full cycle of year-round, the project spans with a series of seasonal walks and creative workshops over digital spaces between forest gatherings. After two years of experimental journey with a dedicated group of participants, the project published the toolkit for sharing the grass-root knowledge and diaspora healing methods. It is accessible via the resources section of ESEA Hub.
Becoming Forest has extended its reach by taking up the Arts Catalyst Residency, setting up the ESEA diaspora sonic space of solidarity and comfort through producing four episode for each of four seasons. It starts with the Winter Episode that explores Filipino diaspora sonic space, including interview of Michaele Nagac, a mental health support officer at Kanlungan Filipino Consortium to discuss the colonial implication of mental health problems and how we associate sound and memory for the healing process. Spring Episode invites listeners to enjoy a polyphonic spring day, featuring birdsong, buzzing bees, weather, and East Asian folk songs and Vietnamese folk tale, interlaced with an interview with Jack Shieh, the director of Vietnamese Mental Health Services, who has dedicated almost 40 years to community work in the UK.
Summer Episode aims to hold a space of solidarity and communal comfort for Hong Kong diasproa communities, inviting listeners to a conversation held during a communal hotpot meal where the UK based artists with Hong Kong heritage – Bettina Fung 馮允珊, Yarli Allison, and Yin Lo – share their thoughts on food, homemaking, language, migration, decolonisation and more. The last Autumn Episode is a gift of the collective playlist put forward by the Becoming Forest community members. Each track is intersected with the short story explaining why this song is special to their particular lived experience as migrants and how it is relevant to their current life trajectories.
* Collaboration with Taey Iohe
* Radio production with Cường Phạm, with support from Kitty Turner & Lori E. Allen
* In partnership with Southeast and East Asian Centre and Kanlungan Filipino Consortium.
* The project is the recipient of Arts Council England Project Grant, with the additional support from a-n Time Space Money bursary and Arts Catalyst Radio Residency bursary.
