A new exhibition has launched this February to place a spotlight on young people's mental health. 

Blending fine art, textiles, sculpture, and photography, the FELT exhibition showcases the work of 22 artists aged between 18 and 30, inspired by their lived experience of mental ill health. 

The exhibition was spearheaded by the Arc Centre, a Stockport charity specialising in art and wellbeing. Based in the Hat Museum, the group aims to give local communities new skills and opportunities by improving wellbeing through visual art. 

The FELT exhibition comes just in time for Children's Mental Health Week, which gives a voice to both children and young people to raise awareness about mental wellbeing. 

"Sometimes it can be a bit overwhelming to have loads of thoughts going on at once," says Arc volunteer Mars Cort. "When you get them out of your head and onto paper, even if it's just scribbles, then that already makes it so much smaller." 

Born in Stockport and now studying a degree in Fine Art, their work follows a "turbulent" time with their self-image. "The painting itself is about how I felt like living inside of my own body during a turbulent period of my mental health, where I was flipping between love and hate. I thought I was perfect, and I thought something was wrong. 

"I felt like it fit the brief of the mental ill health side of things. And I thought I might as well go for it." 

More than one in five young people under 25 are said to have a probable mental health condition, according to charity YoungMinds, with boys and young men significantly more likely to remain silent. 

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The cost of living crisis is said to be a major factor in poor mental wellbeing, along with months or even years-long waiting lists for NHS support. 

For many people involved in the FELT exhibition, the act of expressing their feelings and experiences through art has been therapeutic. According to artist Alexandra James: "You just completely switch off". 

"Even if you've just doing a silly little doodle, it can just make you feel so much better." 

After a lifelong interest in the arts, Alexandra is now completing a masters degree in art therapy. She had previously worked in marketing, and made the pivot after seeing the benefits art had on seriously ill people. "We worked alongside an art therapist for breast cancer patients, doing a couple of free sessions for them to help them with loneliness and anxiety through breast cancer diagnosis. 

"It's like helping people open up a little bit more through creative outlets," she says. "It's just about the process of making something and commenting on it, and it's another way of opening up – it's really hard to be vulnerable and make those first steps, especially with therapy. 

"I've only just picked art back up again over the last couple of years. It was just experimenting, really, and just trying to find my style. And so the exhibition came along at a really good time, to be honest." 

It's a view shared by another featured artist, Yiru Sun. Like Mars and Alexandra, her work came from a period of struggle with her mental health, and makes use of common materials to spark thought. Plastic wrap and flowers intertwine with a human arm – "the rawest material" an artist can use – to show audiences a conflict of beauty and suffocation. 

She said: "It's still not widely discussed, the distinct stigma around mental health and things like that, but I think it's getting more and more open discussion recently." 

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According to Yiru, choosing to take part in the exhibition was deeply personal, and like other artists, she was optimistic about the positive impact it had on her mentally. With the opening of the exhibition, she is hopeful that the work may speak to visitors coming in to look – even if they may not relate to her own experiences. 

"You know, you're probably not going to feel connected to any of the pieces and just leave," she says slowly. "But in some exhibitions you didn't even plan [on seeing], you see a tiny piece in the corner, and then you're like, Oh my God. 

"I hope for the entire exhibition someone might do that with my piece. It's really just about that moment of connection, almost like talking to each other. I think that would be the biggest reward to me as an artist." 

The FELT exhibition is being held at the Hat Museum until the 14 March, and is open to the public on Thursdays and Fridays from 10am to 4pm and Saturdays from 11am to 3pm. 

The charity runs monthly art clubs, drop ins, and socials across the year to connect people across Stockport and Greater Manchester through art. 

"One of the main courses I volunteer for with Arc is the Arts for Wellbeing Course," says Mars. "And over the course of eight to ten weeks, I can see the participants growing in confidence, and have definitely lived it myself as a previous participant. 

"When you're a volunteer, you get opportunities emailed out to you from the volunteer coordinator, and that can be something as simple as handing out some leaflets in Merseyway, or longer term stuff like volunteering to assist on programmes like Arts for Wellbeing. 

"I love volunteering for stuff like exhibition nights, putting up exhibitions and taking them down. It's good fun, it's very fulfilling, and it's a big part of my life nowadays. It's very close to me, and I get a lot out of it. 

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"You can have a creative outlet where there are no rules and no judgment, " they add. "There's an outlet for everybody." 

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