CAST Film Festival

HSE

The Health Service Executive provides funding to promote its strategies around physical, mental and sexual health amongst the youth population. The HSE recognise that youth participation in social innovation promotes positive wellbeing in young people. The HSE provides the Making Our World Healthier (Physical Wellbeing and Mental Health) Awards as well as the Relationships and Sexual Health Award.

HSE Healthy Ireland

The Health Service Executive provides funding to promote its strategies around physical, mental and sexual health amongst the youth population. The HSE recognise that youth participation in social innovation promotes positive wellbeing in young people. The HSE provides the Making Our World Healthier (Physical Wellbeing and Mental Health) Awards as well as the Relationships and Sexual Health Award.

CAST Film Festival 

Collinstown Park Community College, Clondalkin, Dublin

The Social Issue

Prompted by a suicide in their community, this group of ambitious teens in Collinstown Park Community College wanted to provide a creative outlet for young people to challenge the stigma around Mental Health and passionately express their thoughts. 

The Idea

The medium of film was chosen, and the team wrote and produced a short film called First Aid for the Mind, which led to powerful conversations among students, staff, and the wider school community.

We feel that the message of positive mental health works best when it is delivered to young people by young people and that is where the idea of CAST came from.

The Impact:

Following the success of that first film, the team saw an opportunity to get more of their peers involved and so the CAST (Caring About Society Together) film festival was born. CAST became an established national film festival with entries submitted from all over Ireland each year.