THE week-long Love Arts Festival, championing mental health and the healing power of the arts, will present eight acts in Love Arts Late on Wednesday at The Fleeting Arms, Gillygate, York.

The "Pay what you feel" night at York's pop-up community arts space will run from 7pm to 11pm with half-hourly slots for Sean Burn, Teej Jackson, Catherine Scott, Nicole Palfrey, Sarah Goddard, Maxie Wade, Gobbledigook and Stu Freestone.

At 7pm, North Eastern poet Sean Burn will read from Tattooing Lorca, a poetry cycle about one particular sectioning and post-sectioning recovery, taken from his first book of poetry, 2009's Wings Are Giving Out.

And Tonight, Standing Up Live, It's Teej Jacskon will be the York actor's first real crack at stand-up comedy at 7.30pm. "Come September, I'll be studying at Salford University, but I love continuously acting a fool and making people laugh," he says. "So, if that's what you like, come see me; there may be a few surprises, who knows. Let us raise awareness for a good cause and have a laugh doing it."

Catherine Scott, an experienced counsellor turned poet, will present Performance Poetry For The Perplexed at 8pm in a thought-provoking, emotional, moving and amusing rollercoaster poetic ride, where she addresses mental health problems with knowledge and understanding.

At 8.30pm, in Oh Poor Watcher, lion-haired Nicole Palfrey will perform delicate acoustic songs and melancholy folk twinkling, written and recorded in her living room with "just the right amount of sad vibes for fans of Grouper, Bon Iver, Carissa's Weird and Mazzy Star".

York playwright, poet and freelance writer Sarah Goddard will focus on the daily struggles and victories of living with a mental illness as she tries to spin a positive light on the stigma so often attached to them at 9pm. Gritty and personal, her poems spark interest and debate into "the dark and sometimes brilliant" world of Bipolar Disorder.

Maxie Wade, host of York's free comedy night Stand Up & Be Social, will be debuting a new 30-minute set of irreverent anecdotal comedy ahead of her summer appearances at the Edinburgh Fringe. This time she forgoes the usual blue jokes in favour of her own stories of mental health, as she dissects her experiences of depression, Bipolar suicide attempts and anti-psychotic drugs, finding gentle humour in dark subject matters in her 9.30pm slot.

Gobbledigook's Phil Grainger and David Jarman will be on a quest to blend the feelgood heart of soul music, the essence of rural folk, the groove of hip-hop and the raw honesty of contemporary poetry with wry northern humour and a belief in love and unity at 10pm; all this, while wearing cool boots.

"Can we succeed in this quest?" ask the happy-go-lucky collective of Grainger, actor, entertainer, vocalist and all-round nice chap, and Jarman, songwriter, spoken-word artist and aspiring all-round nice chap.

The night will conclude at 10.30pm to 11pm with York actor and spoken-word poet Stu Freestone's Talk/No Talk, in which he recounts the heartfelt and nostalgic experiences of youth, assisted by live and pre-recorded soundscape backing.