New fundraising challenge launched to mark Eating Disorders Awareness Week

BEAT (formerly the Eating Disorders Association) believe that ‘no one should face an eating disorder alone’ and, in this spirit, this year they are launching a new fundraising challenge with their annual Eating Disorders Awareness Week (February 28 to March 6).

One in 50 people (1.25 million) in the UK is affected by eating disorders, often in secret. Eating disorders are serious mental illnesses that involve disordered eating behaviour including bulimia, binge eating, avoidant or restrictive food intake disorder (ARFID), other specified feeding or eating disorder (OSFED) and anorexia, which has the highest mortality rate of any mental illness. While 95 per cent of people who suffer from them are between the ages of 12 and 25, teenagers between 13 and 17 are most at risk. More common in females, they are not determined by sex and can affect all genders, races and ethnic groups.

While many relate eating disorders to teenage girls who can be hyper-focused on their weight and body shape, men now represent roughly 10 per cent of those treated for eating disorders. With social media portraying the ideal male body as muscular and toned, and 90 per cent of teenage boys exercising with the purpose of bulking up, body image pressure is one of the strongest predictors of an eating disorder in men. Some of the feelings an individual with an eating disorder may experience are an intense fear of gaining weight, a distorted self-image, a compulsion to check out perceived flaws in the mirror, low self-worth and self-esteem, a preoccupation with food and self-consciousness around eating in public, social withdrawal and secrecy around food, eating small or restrictive portions or ranges of food, binge eating, unusual food rituals and experimentation with fad diets, repeated weighing of their body, mood swings and compulsive or excessive exercising.

Young people’s problems with food can begin as a coping strategy for times when they are bored, anxious, angry, lonely, ashamed or sad. Since the pandemic, an increasing number of children have experienced difficulty communicating negative emotions and an inability to resolve conflict as the result of emotional pain which might have been unexpressed, repressed or suppressed. Food insecurity among adults and children nearly doubled to almost 30 per cent by the summer of

2020, due to rising levels of unemployment, poverty and limited access to school nutrition as the result of school closures.

If a child is having a problem with their nutritional habits and showing signs of disease, there are a number of useful strategies that parents and guardians can employ to help the sufferer feel they are not alone.

Communication

Ideally, parents need to act as role models of healthy eating behaviour without using food as a reward or punishment. In terms of verbal communication, a good starting point is to create a safe place where the young person with the eating disorder can speak, be listened to and not be judged by an adult who inflicts the idea that they have all the answers. It can be useful to chat about whether social media or peer pressure causes them insecurity about their appearance.

On a practical level, parents and family members can get involved with children in planning and preparing meals, setting up a regular snack and meal schedule and encouraging the family to eat together. If the problem persists, they need to help the sufferer seek professional intervention, in the form of specialist treatment and support to assist them on their road to recovery.

Leonora Langley will be doing a presentation and book signing for Let the Souls of Our Children Sing at Daily Bread, Rusthall High Street, Rusthall, Tunbridge Wells on Tuesday March 21 from 10.45am to 12.45pm.

Currently on display at the Amelia Scott exhibition space, which is located in the town’s new cultural hub, is Leviathan, a large-scale triple-screen immersive video installation by the Canadian artist Kelly Richardson.

The show has been able to go ahead thanks to a unique collaboration with the Arts Council Collection, through the ‘Borrow Big!’ scheme. The presentation of Leviathan at The Amelia will be the first time the work consideration of the present. Her work is influenced by 19th-century landscape painting, 20th-century cinema, and 21st-century planetary research.

According to a spokesperson at The Amelia the video work ‘draws on the artist’s distinct art practice which pulls together ideas around conservation and a careful observation of the effects of humanity on the planet’.

Richardson films the bald cypress trees, indigenous to Caddo Lake in Uncertain, Texas and manipulates the footage, creating a series of twisting, snake-like tendrils of yellowish light in the water with an eerie soundtrack replacing the sounds of nature.

Environment

has been exhibited since being acquired by the Arts Council Collection in 2015. Leviathan was originally commissioned by Artpace in San Antonio, Texas.

Kelly Richardson crafts video installations and digital prints that offer imaginative glimpses of the future and prompt a careful

The artist explains: “I’m trying to create contemplative places which are both beautiful and mesmeric but at the same time unsettling.”

Presented as a triptych, the landscape is viewed from a single vantage point, like a painting set in motion. The immersive environment of Leviathan is entirely devoid of people and invites viewers to ‘insert themselves into the work’ and become its sole protagonist. Richardson’s manipulation of the video suggests several foreboding plot lines: the birth of primordial life, the emergence of a malign aquatic creature or a post-apocalyptic Earth.

The setting of Richardson’s work is that of Caddo Lake which is thought to be the first site in the world for underwater oil drilling and so it plays a significant role in the shaping of current fossil-fuel debates concerning the global climate crisis.

“Tunbridge Wells has strong links to conservation, having enshrined the protection of wild plants, animals, and natural habitats in The Tunbridge Wells Improvement Act of 1889,” explains The Amelia’s spokesperson.

Richardson films Caddo Lake’s bald cypress trees and manipulates the footage, creating a series of twisting, snake-like tendrils of yellowish light in the water

“This ground-breaking legislation ensured the protection and stewardship of the extensive commons found locally and the plants and wildlife that dwell and flourish on it. The staging

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Initial questions may be directed to Alex Green, biddirector@rtwtogether.com of Leviathan at The Amelia Scott comes at a significant time historically, in reflection of growing global climate concerns and places Tunbridge Wells once again at the centre of environmental and conservation debates.” According to the cultural space’s spokesperson, the exhibition of Leviathan at The Amelia Scott allows fruitful conversations with themes in the collection. “Visitors are able to experience contemporary and historic ways of conserving the natural world. Richardson’s explorations, research and collection of video footage in Uncertain, Texas, have parallels with the ambitions of those who collected specimens and data during the Victorian period, and were

WHAT IS THE ARTS COUNCIL COLLECTION’S BORROW BIG! SCHEME?

The loan of Leviathan has been made possible by the generous support of the Arts Council Collection’s Borrow Big! scheme. Borrow Big! is a pilot aimed at collaborating with venues to loan large-scale artworks from the Arts Council Collection to share with audiences across the UK and to create opportunities for new audiences to enjoy a range of immersive works of art.

The Arts Council Collection was founded in 1946 and is the most widely circulated national loan collection of modern and contemporary British art, spanning paintings, sculpture, prints, drawings, performance and moving image.

It supports and promotes artists by acquiring art at an early stage in their careers and includes a diverse range of work from artists such as Barbara Hepworth, Henry Moore, Lubaina Himid and Grayson Perry.

With more than 8,000 works and over 1,000 loans made to venues a year, the Arts Council Collection is seen by millions of people in public spaces from galleries and museums to hospitals, libraries, and universities.

The Arts Council Collection is managed by the Southbank Centre on behalf of the Arts Council England.

originally part of the Tunbridge Wells Natural History Society, and now in the collections at The Amelia Scott.”

They add that the themes of Leviathan provide vital and prescient reflection on the effects of humans on the natural world, building upon the work of those who came before her. Leviathan continues a tradition of presenting the natural world to audiences, to educate, enthral and generate discussion around the conservation of the natural world.

Kelly Richardson’s Leviathan video installation is open daily at the Amelia until May 15. Entrance is free. For more information visit: theamelia.co.uk