AI Art Creation for Mental Health and Creativity

View some of the artwork produced in a workshop with the Young Foundation and mental health charity Arts Network Lewisham, and have a go at creating your own digital art piece using Midjourney. You can also find out about the ways we incorporated traditional artistic practices into our workshop and some of the biases of AI that were revealed during our project.

In July 2023, King's Undisciplined Spaces project partnered with the Young Foundation and mental health charity Arts Network Lewisham to create and deliver an AI art workshop for their members. Members of the Network, who all struggle with their mental health, were invited to use the Midjourney image generation platform to explore their issues and creative identities, as well as engage with a new and controversial medium for creating visual art. The artwork was then exhibited at Somerset House in September 2023.

This demonstration is being run by Scott Williams and Rebecca Pericleous.

Scott Williams is a PhD film and philosophy researcher at the Department of Film Studies. His research compares totalitarian political formations to the cinema, looking at how both phenomena respond to the intrinsic human need for meaning and purpose. Scott also contributes to King’s community impact work, particularly involving the creative arts, as well as mentoring postgraduate researchers in community engagement.

Rebecca Pericleous is a Music Research PhD candidate at the Department of Music. Her research interests focus on intersections of music, protest and community, exploring how digital media may bring disaffected people to the streets, and ultimately to the ballot box. Rebecca is also engaged in participatory research rooted in community priorities and is involved with activist collectives in Nicosia, London and New York.

This demo is in-person. Registration is not required.

This demo is part of the King's Festival of Artificial Intelligence, running from Tuesday 21 to Saturday 25 May 2024.