Mobilizing Bellevue by Building the Garden Theatre

Abstract

Transforming the mental hospital; its conversion from a custodial into a rehabilitative hospital; the struggle with the psychiatric imperatives of community psychiatry and deinstitutionalization triggered the pioneering Cultural Therapy Movement in 1977. Implemented by the establishment of daily group meetings in every ward of the hospital and by the establishment of monthly large group ethnohistorical meeting based on the African oral tradition combined with the concept of worker participation plebiscite of the Democratic Socialist Jamaican Government. Sociodrama of Madnificent Irations was developed by creating a Cultural Therapy Centre, and staging a pageant depicting the history of the institution culled from the perspective of the worker participation dialectic conversations, the skills and talents of a core team of culturally trained Nursing Aides and mobilizing the hospital to build a Garden Theatre from bamboo and wood, creating a revolutionary ‘safe place’ for cultural and political reasonings of the Jamaican people.