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Impact Case Study: Kooi Chock Glendinning from Arcola Theatre

Kooi Chock Glendinning is a retired biomedical scientist who came to the UK in 1972 and trained as a nurse. She talks about some of the hardships she has endured during her personal and working life.

She tells us how getting involved with a mental health theatre project at Arcola Theatre in Hackney helped her find a new creative outlet in her life, friendship and support to recover from workplace bullying. The “Arcola Theatre Mental Health Community Theatre Company” was made possible thanks to a grant from our Westfield East Bank Creative Futures Fund, co-funded by Westfield Stratford City.

She says being part of the theatre group was life-changing:

“There’s so many of us as suffering similar situation and then we help each other to sort of come out of it really. We try to come out of it because by just talking and knowing that you know who, you’re with we have similar problem, we can talk properly and understand each other. So it is a really good, good project.”

You can also read Kooi Chock’s own blog for us.

Photo & video: Chris Baker

Part 1 

Transcript: My name is Kooi Chock Glendinning. So some people call me Kooi, some people call me Chock, but, you know, you can call me any. I’ll still answer you.  So I came to be trained as a nurse. So I did that for six years. I did love it. You know, as a young person, I didn’t want to do night duty all the time. So I retrain. I managed to get on to a trainee job and I became a biomedical Scientist. Yeah, it was a lovely job. I started in St John’s Hospital right in the middle of Soho. So lots of Chinese food around. So I felt really at long last, I wasn’t homesick anymore.

Part 2 

Transcript: So I work as a biomedical Scientist. I went through all the hospitals in London. So these St Thomas’, UCE, and I did climb the ladder despite that man. Sure, everybody got discriminated at some point, but I found it very hard as the higher I go up the ladder, the career ladder, the more they want to bully me. And I think throughout the years I built up a sort of, a strong. They make me strong actually, bullying me so much, you know. How would you like it being bully in your home country. You come to another country, you get bullied because you’re different. So I now I become very strong and I can, you know, know I will fight back. And that get me into trouble too because I would never say, I would never let anyone bully me anymore.

Part 3

Transcript: Oh so so because I was bullied in my, my last job and so I became retired, I then I was bullied so much I became a mental health patient. So when Arcola Theatre was looking for mental health people to, I think it was a new project that they managed to get funding for, for us, to people with similar situation, get together so that we can talk about our problem. We can understand each other and create and and write stories and perform.

Part 4

Transcript: I mean, not only do I get respect from all my friends is a wow, Cho is performing and they come and watch me perform and then they like amazed too and they want to do the same, you know. You know, People die at whatever age but you know as you get old, we’re only here for a certain period of time and I was thinking, oh my God, now I feel so confident I’m at my best time of my life. I don’t want to think about death. And he’s not coming my way for a while.  

So it’s really good. It is that I know I need I feel mentally good, physically good, you know, because when you’re happy, everything comes nice. When you’re sad, it’s miserable, everything goes down with you So, you know, you don’t do anything when you are mentally, mentally disturbed. So you really it’s really a very clever way of getting someone better.

To learn more about Arcola Theatre and its projects , check out the “Arcola Theatre Mental Health Community Theatre Company” page on our website. 

To learn more about the Westfield East Bank Creative Futures Fund, see our Grant Programme page

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