THE 2015 Love Arts Festival will open on Monday for a week-long focus on championing and celebrating mental health and the healing power of the arts.

In its second year, the festival will mount a programme spanning live music, stories and poetry; comedy in a new collaboration with the Burning Duck Comedy Club; a film showcase with a northern emphasis; a visual arts trail of eight locations across the city; a conference offering workshops, presentations, talks and performances, and a two-day mini-fringe theatre festival.

In addition, Love Arts Late on Wednesday will present poetry, music, comedy and spoken word performances of insightful material into mental health conditions, told from personal experience.

"When we sat down to look at the programme for this year's festival, we decided that there were two main things we wanted to do," says festival committee chairman Peter Gorbert. "Firstly, bring service users to the forefront of the festival; secondly, give people the skills to enable them to use the arts in their own recovery or while supporting someone else.

"It was a tall order but I think we've achieved that with more service user work being displayed across the city than last year and a whole conference for people to come and learn about mental health and the arts. We also have a number of showcase events, including everything from theatre and music to comedy and dance."

The Fossgate Social bar will play host to Love Arts Live on Monday, kicking off with Converge Creative Writers at 8pm, when students will read their work in verse and prose on both tragic and comic subject matters. At 8.30pm, two young people with their own experience of mental illness will collaborate with storyteller Cath Heinemayer in Wormwood In The Garden, a performance of poetry, story and imagery, inspired by Italo Calvino's unusual story Wormwood.

This "pay what you feel" night will end with a 9pm set of humorous songs by Completely Bananas, two songwriters who have suffered from psychosis and met through the Out Of Character theatre company in York.

Love Arts Laughter, hosted by Al Greaves's Burning Duck Comedy Club, will present Harriet Dyer & Pals in a night of alternative humour on Tuesday at the Black Swan Inn, Peasholme Green, from 7.45pm to 10pm. "Is mental health an appropriate subject for stand-up comedy? Let's find out," invites Al, who is finalising the rest of his running order for this £3 event.

Harriet runs a mental health awareness night in Manchester and has started talking more openly on stage about her own experiences. "Previously I thought it was normal to regularly feel like you’re plummeting down a dark vortex of despair. Apparently this is not the case,” she says. "It’s good to talk about things. It’s even better to laugh about them.”

Love Arts Film, on Wednesday, will be a free evening of three short films from 6pm to 6.45pm at The Fleeting Arms, Gillygate. It will begin with Inspired Youth's Mind Me, a digital multi-media installation with photography and poetry that focuses on adults in Stockton-on-Tees who must face the stigma associated with using mental health services.

Gerry Turvey's The Space Between, at 6.15pm, is a dance performance by individuals with mental health needs, emerging dance artists and a support worker that explores the nature of madness and sanity, while Quarantine, at 6.30pm, was created by a group of young people at York Mind. Devised around the notion, "What if mental health was treated like a contagious virus?", the film seeks to break down stigma by considering a "dystopian vision of the future".

Organised by Magnetic Arts, the free Love Arts Trail will be in operation from Monday to Sunday, showcasing artists whose lives have been touched by mental health matters, with the spotlight on "talent not illness". The shows include mixed-media panels, photographs, drawings, oil paintings, watercolours and graphic novel artwork.

The shows will feature James Norris and Bev Peace in Artistic Autistic at the York St John University Art Foyer; The Retreat group's Mandalas at The Perky Peacock, Gillygate; Jae Davey, Lisa Fascione, Krystina Spink and Robyn Heather at The Fleeting Arms; Michael Bettridge at The Perky Peacock, Lendal Tower; Magnetic Arts at City Screen, York; Converge group and Frank Holli, Spurriergate Centre; and York Mind craft group's artwork, According To McGee, Tower Street.

Full details of the Love Arts Conference on Thursday and Friday can be found at lovearts.co.uk; Love Arts Late will take place on Wednesday at The Fleeting Arms with more details of the eight acts in Monday's On The Side column in The Press. Love Arts Theatre will be held next Saturday and Sunday at the Friargate Theatre, Friargate; see next Thursday's What's On for a full preview.

One theatre show stands alone ahead of the weekend spotlight: Ben Rosenfield's Rapid Eye Movements # Fireball XL5 on Tuesday at Quad South Hall, York St John University, at 7.30pm when The Dead Bellbottom Boys take a light-hearted look at depression, death and other things beginning with 'D'.

Festival ticket details can be found at loveartsyork.co.uk