Bear With Me artist urges people to ‘keep talking’

The artist behind a sculpture aimed at raising awareness of male suicide rates has said “we have to keep talking” five years on from its installation.

Bear With Me was installed on Jacob’s Wells Road in Bristol in 2020 to mark World Suicide Prevention Day on 10 September.

But the anonymous artist said male suicide rates are still just as much of a problem as they ever were.

“I installed this statue during the pandemic, but now people are struggling for different reasons, but just as much. I’m not overly optimistic about things getting better, which is all the more reason why you’ve got to keep talking about it,” he said.

According to the latest data from the Office for National Statistics, 5,656 suicides were registered in England in 2023, of which 4,188 were males who took their own lives.

The artist said the sculpture – of a man being comforted by a small bear – continues to get a lot of attention on social media, including from across the globe.

“Five years later there’s still a massive reaction from people that are only just seeing it for the first time,” he said.

The artist recalled a time he bumped into a man from Malaysia whilst on holiday in 2023.

“He said, ‘what do you do?’ and I said, ‘I’m a street sculptor’. Then he said, ‘you didn’t do Bear With Me, did you?’. That’s the joy of the internet.”

According to the artist, the sculpted bear represented the comfort you get from a childhood toy.

“When we’re little, we’re allowed to be soft and silly. If the world is a scary place, you can always go to your teddy bear,” he said.

“But, as we get older, we’re told to ‘toughen up, be a man, don’t show your feelings’.”

He said he wanted to put something out that showed “you can be soft”.

“I think being weak is a real strength, acknowledging when you’re not OK,” he added.

The male suicide rate and the loss of a friend to suicide inspired the artist to create the statue.

He said he had mixed feelings about the amount of reaction it got at the time.

“By the end of the first week, the amount of social media hits it had went over a quarter of a million,” he said.

“It’s gobsmacking to have that reaction, but it’s also heart-breaking, that all those people who responded to it had some connection one way or another with suicide.”

The artist even received a message from someone who was about to take their own life, but stopped when they saw a post of the sculpture.

“If I stop one person doing it, then everything is worth the effort,” he said.