THE lurgy took away the first two weeks of my year, just as it did with a lot of people. Emerging in recent days out of a cocoon of illness and being able to be in public without having a coughing fit has seemed like an achievement.

First up, the First Fortnight festival, a festival around improving your mental health that takes place in January to lift people's spirits in the depths of our long winter. Readers of this column may remember my odyssey around church services in Belfast, which got under way in 2009. I started off as a non-churchgoer and a couple of years in as I went to every part of the city visiting churches, mission halls, cathedrals, chapels and basements and while trying to work out the difference and similarities something happened: Early one year I realised that my usual January blues had disappeared and I seemed to have formed a buffer between me and the oppressive January days. So I began liking this time of year and I came to value the inner glow that keeps me going.

But I'm aware many people have thrown faith out of their lives and find this part of the year difficult. So off I went to a First Fortnight event in Duncairn Arts – the 'Therapy Sessions', curated by Stephen James Smith, a poet who lives the line 'We must create in order to know who we can be.' He told the sold-out audience that in his opinion what is going on at Duncairn Arts Centre makes it the most important arts centre on the island of Ireland. That may have something to do with Ray Griffen and his passion for music –  and those who let him get on with it. 

First Fortnight has a couple of events in  the North, but the focus is the South of Ireland with some events also in Paris and London. The Belfast event was a selection of poets and musicians that made for a very entertaining evening.

As usual, the poet Nandi Jola was an inspiration. A newly-formed group, Mira, were a delight; and to understand just how emerging creativity is coping, their lead singer admitted she had no heating in the house and as a result felt the arts centre was pleasantly warm. Harry Baker delighted us with poems about his new baby and – bizarrely – one about postcodes he was commissioned to do by a company in the Isle of man.

The idea is to get out of the house and spend some time with the company of others, experiencing the arts to better your mental health.

The converted Portico of Ards in Portaferry flies the flag for classical music. They have a congregation that is still attached to it but the arts centre hosted the Red Priests on Sunday afternoon, a Baroque ensemble playing music from 450 years ago that would have been played in taverns. The lovely thing about art is that there is room for all kinds of art forms from all eras and the creative process  can take us anywhere and places we have yet to discover.

Portico has Radio 3 coming at the end of the month for a series of three concerts with Michael Hale and various musicians; the week after it's Colin Murphy the comedian; and there's the Feel Good Festival in March focusing on how the arts can. uplift and inspire.

Experiencing artistic expression in a  group setting can raise our spirits. It's different from watching TV or being online and the combined energy of the humans watching or participating in the arts raises our spirits and can help us through a dark January. It's ironic that people are doing this in converted churches.

See more at www.PorticoArds.com