Meeting... Darren McGarvey

Prizewinning author, activist for social justice and rapper Darren McGarvey was a welcome guest at the Glasgow West support group.

ice Chair of the Board of Trustees and facilitator for Glasgow West, Victoria Reid, was delighted to welcome Darren to the group:

“I first came across Darren’s work 20 years ago in Paris when, homesick, I had tuned into Radio Scotland online. It was a programme about ‘Neds’. Darren’s interviews with some groups of young people, deemed outside society, were so refreshing in their genuine curiosity, care, respect and urgency. People without an established place in society, written off by many, were opening up, being trusting, and expressing themselves beyond their immediate peer group. This was new to my ear. Not formulaic, but genuinely enquiring.

Darren’s ‘lived experience’ has been at the core of his work as an author of two remarkable books on social justice: Poverty Safari and The Social Distance Between Us. It has also featured largely in his television work, namely: ‘Darren McGarvey’s Addictions’ and ‘The State We’re In’. Darren has a lively presence on Twitter X and a podcast; he has delivered a Radio 4 Reith Lecture, ‘Freedom from Want ’. Most recently he has performed at The Fringe: ‘Trauma Industrial Complex – Trauma and Oversharing in the Age of Lived Experience’.

For me, going back to those early interviews of Darren’s, there was an opening up of trust, experience and expression that could only come about because he was so candid and unguarded himself. It’s a risky process, certainly in a public forum (in contrast to our own here). For those reasons, Darren proved a fitting guest.”

This event was funded by GCVS Glasgow Community Mental Health and Wellbeing Fund and supported by the team at Bipolar Scotland. Darren talked and did a Q&A in the first hour, before participating in our usual support group circle. The event was well-attended, and people came from Glasgow City and North Lanarkshire support groups also.