By Emily Horner
A mental health charity project, Man About Town, has been created in Leeds to give socially isolated men in their 40s and 50s a creative outlet in music and film.
It is the latest project by Creative Frame, a charity which teaches art workshops, in alliance with music charity, Cloth Cat, both based in Leeds.
The aim of the project – funded by Leeds Community Foundation – is to encourage men in south Leeds who may be socially isolated and at risk of suicide to engage back into the wider community through music and digital arts workshops to be run at Old Chapel Studios.
Jonathan Parker, a founder of the project, said: “Leeds has a particularly poor record in terms of male suicide- it connects with me as a male in that age bracket.”
The Leeds suicide audit published in 2016 found that men in the city are almost five times more likely to end their own life than women.