Open Up Initiatives Scheme

Growing Minds was first established in the spring of 2007. South Somerset Mind secured the funding from a charitable trust for a three year project aimed at engaging with people with mental health problems through music.

The idea was to reach out to people in secure units, as well as service users at Mind’s own drop-in facility in Yeovil, and give them the opportunity to listen to, or become involved in making music of their own. This it was felt would be therapeutic, and an aid to recovery from mental health problems.

All the musicians involved were volunteers, and all had their own experiences of mental health issues.

By the early part of 2008 some of the volunteers had had to withdraw for personal reasons, and only two (Paul Belmonte and Chris Brabyn) remained. In order for the project to move forward Paul Chousmer was brought in as project co-ordinator, and two new musicians (Maddy Ralls and Alistair Blackmore) were added to the line-up. Paul C’s life long experience in the music industry has since taken the project into new territory, though its central aims remain the same, and the work is on-going. It was he who identified the creative potential of the individuals involved, and encouraged the move away from other people’s music. It was he who encouraged the band’s members to draw on their own experiences to write their own songs which, we hope, makes the music more relevant to the project and to the people it seeks to help.

By the late summer a fifth member (Craig Cox) had joined the line-up, and the band had so much original material at its disposal that they were looking for a wider audience and an opportunity to promote mental health issues and speak out against the widespread discrimination and stigma that seems to attach itself to the millions of people who suffer some kind of mental health problem at some time in their lives. The funding allocated to us by Open Up has indeed opened up that opportunity.

High Peak Writers was formed in 2001 in Buxton, Derbyshire. Though not exclusively, it is intended to help those suffering from mental distress by expressing themselves therapeutically through creative writing in a safe and supportive environment. We obtain most of our funding each year from Derbyshire Primary Care Trust.  In 2003 High Peak Writers obtained funding with an Awards for All grant to write a radio play on a mental health theme, drawing on experiences of those in the group. We wrote the play collaboratively with the help of Clare Thompson, Head of Drama at Buxton Community School, GCSE pupils and Alan Ogden, a local playwright. We have been successful in applying for funding from Derbyshire Community Foundation in 2009 to perform the play in the 2010 Buxton Fringe Festival and we have also received funding through the Open Up Initiatives Scheme to re-record the play professionally in Derbyshire and put the recording on our website, www.high-peak-writers.btik.com. Please visit the site if you require further information about the group, the play and the time-to-change Campaign.

We are a group of women working together to produce a drama in Hindi. The play will cover issues related to mental health and domestic violence. We are writing the script, drawing from our own experiences and will be acting in it ourselves. We will be having group discussions after each performance where the audience can ask questions. The message of the piece is to encourage other women in our situation to speak out about their experiences and let them know anything is possible.

Feedback for Khamoshi from Harrow performance on 30th October 2009:

"My immediate feelings after seeing the play were that it affected me emotionally. Although I have not been a victim of domestic violence in a married relationship, there were things in the play I could relate to and affected me a great deal"

"The quality of the play was very high, the acting was very good as well as the script. The dances worked very well in the play and made it more appealing and helped to put the message across."

"I was very moved by the play, even if I didn’t understand the spoken language. The narration before each scene was helpful. The gestures and nuances displayed by the actors were very real and depicted the sadness evoked in the play."

"I thought the acting was of a high quality. The play clearly captured mental health discrimination and domestic violence using drama in a unique way within a different culture. It was a great learning experience."
 
"I can’t think of any ways in how the play should be improved."

"In my opinion, it was done in such a way that would be easily understood by people outside of the culture."
 
"I particularly liked the dance element aspect, which was indeed very therapeutic."
 
"I think this play could be taken up in a range of settings and/or geographical areas as the performance was really good."
 
"Healthcare professionals, Drama therapists – since they use drama in a healing/therapeutic way and the general public would all benefit from this play."

"I was very emotional but at the same time happy that there was a happy ending. I wanted the play to keep going on."

"The quality of the play was excellent and it looked very professional. There was acting, dancing, emotions and happiness, it had everything. I would give it 10/10."

"There is nothing I can think of to improve the play as the actors did it so well".

"I was able to understand how they [the characters] must be feeling."

"I think everyone will benefit from this play because domestic violence is always a hidden topic that no one wants to talk about."

"Very touching. Excellent"

You can read more feedback from the first performance of Khamoshi on London Co-ordinator Chandra Shah's blog

MissionMiraculous is an emerging initiative to nurture confidence and encourage recovery among users and survivors of mental health services. We also plan to train and edutain professional and community groups and organisations in mental health awareness issues and to make a measurable impact on attitudes to mental health issues and sufferers in the West Midlands. We sprang from and have involvement in the Centre for Excellence in Interdisciplinery Mental Health Research and Development

We are proud to have been awarded a grant from Open-Up to aid us with our expenses to launch MM's Road2Recovery Show during the summer of 2010 - watch this space!

The innovative national lifestyle magazine for and by people with mental health difficulties, One in Four, is presenting a free conference on stigma and the representation of mental health in the media and in public communications.

'Talking about mental health - getting it right' - Monday 1st February 2010 at the UCH Education Centre, 250 Euston Road, London, NW1 2PG.

Tickets must be booked in advance.  Contact conference@oneinfourmag.org for more details.

It's for people in communications teams, for journalists, for people in public bodies and for people with mental health difficulties.

Speakers and panellists will all have direct experience in mental health and of working in media and communications.

Why are we doing it?

Most people are not experts in mental health. They draw their information about mental health difficulty and those that experience it from the media.

Good, respectful and measured coverage of mental health makes for good attitudes and reduces stigma. Thoughtless, stereotyping or incorrect representations and language makes for confusion, confirmation of discriminatory attitudes and perpetuation of myths.

One in Four is the UK's first aspirational lifestyle magazine, written by people with mental health difficulties, for people with mental health difficulties. One in Four wants to promote useful, considered and positive coverage of mental health difficulties and those that experience them.

One in Four believes that one of the most important ways of challenging stigma is finding ways to discuss mental health difficulty without falling back on stereotyped views or unhelpful language.

One in Four magazine, and Social Spider CIC the social enterprise that publishes it, wants to challenge the ways in which mental health difficulty is understood.

One in Four is pioneering new ways of writing and reporting about mental health difficulty. It believes that mental health difficulty needs to be normalised and treated as a normal part of life, rather than something exotic or threatening. It is seeking to undermine the news-values that make someone’s mental health status or diagnosis ‘news’. Too often, that a person has mental health difficulties is represented in media stories as indicative of something negative about them.

The situation is that, although things are changing, all forms of media commonly fail to do a number of things:

• According to Shift 81% of media stories about mental health difficulty feature no contribution from people who actually experience them
• Mental health difficulty is still reported as a novel fact in news media, leading to inappropriate connects being made between mental health difficulty and negative behaviour or outcomes * Narratives of mental health difficulty in the media can still be paternalistic or patronising, failing to represent people with mental health difficulties simply as people with additional challenges
• Poor understanding of treatments, procedures and medical science leads to misleading reporting, which in turn influences outcomes for people with mental health difficulties
• Some organisations producing materials about mental health lack the fine grain experiential knowledge of the lives of people who experience mental health difficulty, which can lead to materials that fail to reach their intended audiences effectively
• Journalists can inadvertently confirm stereotypes of mental health difficulty when interviewing individuals or creating other media due to a lack of awareness of how wider attitudes can be confirmed by sticking to tried and tested narratives about mental ill health by focusing on a person’s mental health difficulty as the human interest angle of a story.

While it less common than in previous decades to see media stories or representations that are obviously discriminatory, there are still many instances where media present confusing, stigmatising or inadvertently offensive portrayals or representations of mental health difficulty. Often this can be less the meaning or intention of a piece of media, more the way in which it was said or presented.

Our conference will be a space where these challenges can be discussed and a new agenda set for coverage of mental health difficulty.

Please see our flyer for futher details (click here to download)

Hello, we are a newly funded project,working within Employment, promoting the opportunities for Temp work placements ,both paid and voluntary. Our offices are based in Leatherhead, Surrey. At RF Temps we are all experts by experience of Mental Health issues and how these issues affect people in the working world.Prior to gaining funding from Open Up, we were a pilot project that started in  May `08. We have had some success in opening up work placements for our clients, through contacting local Employers . We are partially supported by Richmond Fellowship, who themselves have provided residential and Employment services since 1959 , this year being their 50th Anniversary.

As a consequence of funding and contact with Open Up we hope to extend our services to both Employers and Clients and we welcome self referrals from all in the Mid Surrey area.

We’re a group of 12 people who all have lived experience of mental health problems. People who’ve survived or are using mental health services, or prefer not to use them, or people who care about or support someone who’s experiencing mental distress. Elsewhere people use the terms ’service user’ or ‘carer’, but we prefer one term that covers it all – we don’t like being labelled as either one thing or another.

We want to put on an event for people across the North West to come together to develop a set of outcomes which relate to our experience. 

ROLEcamp will focus on service user and carer involvement and participation. We will run a day of workshops, to focus on various topics, and developing a set of outcomes for each specific topic.

Discrimination will be a key message within the event. We believe that discrimination is a major barrier to accepting the views of people with lived experience on an equal level. 

The Well is a peri-natal peer support group.  We support women with isolation, anxiety, low mood and depression both before and after the birth of a child.

We are based in Balsall Heath, an inner city suburb of Birmingham, probably best know for the 'Balti Triangle'.