Film, mental health, and COVID-19: a case study of the facing the mind project

Composed of a series of webinars that ran from June to August 2020, ‘Facing the Mind’ was a project developed through collaboration between the University of Leeds and the Third Sector, with the specific aim of improving the well-being of a small group of participants, recruited from the local community. Taking the project as a case study, the objectives of this article are thus twofold. Firstly, it will critically reflect on the interdisciplinary methodology deployed by the organizers, which combined creative practice with academic discussions associated with cinematic representations of the face. Secondly, it will chronicle some of the many logistical, ethical, and pedagogical challenges faced by the Facing the Mind team in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, which led to a national lockdown at precisely the point at which the project was due to launch.