Mental Health in Music: Writer's round to benefit Porter's Call

Porter's Call is a local non-profit organization that provides free counceling services to touring artists and their families.

Active Minds and Belmont Songwriters Association are set to host a writer's round and fundraiser Wednesday night titled "Mental Health in Music," to support a local cause.

Through raffle ticket sales and donations, the two organizations will raise money for Porter’s Call, a local non-profit organization that provides free counseling services to touring artists and their families.

The artists performing include Belmont students Corrina Gill, Josh Jordan, Julia Campopiano, Mack Ashbaugh, Sheldon Smith and Sierra Carson.

The event started as junior Cooper Carr’s class project for the honors program. The prompt was to find a niche issue students were passionate about and develop a creative project based off it.

“I landed on the topic of mental health in the music industry, researched the issue and then researched different organizations that help support musicians' mental health,” Carr said. “I chose Porter’s Call because they’re local in Nashville and many of the other organizations were at the national level.”

In order to make his vision a reality, Carr reached out to the director of philanthropy at Porter’s Call as well as the organizations on campus Active Minds and Belmont Songwriters Association.

“Through working on this project, it has been really interesting to dive into this topic,” Carr said. “I'm really excited that at a school with so many creative people, musicians and artists people will have the opportunity to come together and talk about this issue. And just also enjoy some really cool art.”

Carr said he selected the six performers because he wanted to choose people he knew the Belmont community embraces.

“I wanted to support Porter’s Call by performing at this event because I think their message of advocating for people is really important,” junior Julia Campopiano said. “Through this event we are able to hear other artists perspectives and offer our perspective as an artist. Whether we’ve struggled with mental health issues or not it's just nice to have people come together to support this cause.”

At the writers round the variety of performers will perform original songs as well as tributing artists who have lost their lives due to suicide or substance abuse to further highlight the cause.

“One of the original songs I will be performing kind of depicts my own struggles that I’ve had with getting older and having to cope with things changing,” Campopiano said. “The cover song I chose is by Mac Miller. I chose it just because even though he struggles with mental health issues, his music has a lot of positivity and raises awareness within it.”

This event is free to attend and will be held on Wednesday night in the Massey Board Room from 7-9:30 p.m. Students can also receive WellCore credit by attending.

“It’s such a cool event and supporting a really great cause that’s local to the Nashville area,” Campopiano said. “You’ll get to hear a wide variety of styles of music come together. It's not just WellCore you’ll be getting out of it, but you’ll get something out of it by hearing everyone's stories and music.”

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This article was written by Zoe Spangler