In a workshop in northeast England, a team mainly comprised of military veterans apply the finishing touches to a Viking longship named "Stormbird". The project is a labour of love for dozens of ex-servicemen and women struggling with mental health problems. Threatened with closure when the pandemic hit, the project survived under the stewardship of Bob Marshall, who served in the Falklands and Northern Ireland during a 26-year army career. "People always think that they can't, and we will prove to individuals that they can," he says.
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00:00It's about building a boat, but it's not about the boat, it's about the time that the men
00:29and women working on it spend doing it. It's working with them. The boat really is a by-product
00:37of what we're doing. In mental health, one thing you've got to have is time. If we were
00:47doing small projects with individuals, in and out, in and out, they wouldn't really
00:51get the benefit. We're building a team, getting people used to working back together with
00:57each other. People always think that they can't, and we will prove to individuals that
01:20you can. Once they have accepted that proof, they start to believe in themselves. It's
01:27self-affirming, this sort of stuff. We've got one lad who comes in, and he's got a PTSD
01:40and a bit of brain damage, and he comes in and they say, well, he can't do it, but he
01:44comes here, and you give him a job to do, I've had him making roses, and he focuses,
01:50and once he's focused on that, all his troubles are gone. We need a lot more doing from the
01:59government to help people, but the likes of this project, we could do anywhere. They could
02:09have a wood shop, or they could have some kind of project, go cars, anything, just to
02:18get people together, know they're not on their own.