Organising a conference is an exercise in hope

The festive season is always a funny one for people with mental health difficulties.  There’s always excitement and stress, not to mention the fact that for a lot of us, the winter months tend to have their toll on our motivation, mood and energy.

Imagine, though, that you’re also arranging a major conference due to take place a month after Christmas…  Seat of the pants doesn’t even begin to describe it.

At the start of December I met up with Chandra Shah, our Open Up coordinator in a basement café near Baker Street tube.  It was hard to work out which one of us was Holmes and which one of us was Watson, because we both managed to do lots of having brilliant ideas and also lots of nodding and saying “That’s incredible!”

We had already set the date for the conference, booked the venue and began to invite speakers, so we were a bit further along in the whole process of getting our project together.

I told Chandra a lot about the idea behind the conference, and what we’re trying to achieve by holding it. 

We want to have a conference that is a little disruptive, and doesn't just involve the same old charity talking heads.  The idea is to get professionals together with people who experience mental health difficulties, and some professionals with a foot in both camps, to set a new agenda for how the media, companies and public bodies talk about mental health.

We want people with metal health difficulties to go away from the conference realising that not everyone who produces media or information is a stigmatising monster and that people working in the media are often trying to do good things.  We want the producers and professionals to go away with an idea of what really doesn't work, what really upsets people and what really doesn't connect.

It's a great opportunity to cover some of the ground that Time to Change hasn't really covered, especially the idea that sometimes people in the media trying to good things can often by accident do things that make people with mental health difficulties feel stigmatised or that perpetuates unhelpful ideas.

Chandra told me a lot about how the Open Up project he supervised, Khamoshi, had been extremely successful.  It seems we’ve got a lot to live up to with our conference.

As the month progressed, we played the game of nerves that is trying to get people to speak at a conference.  It’s a little like asking people out on a date; you’re always really nervous and wound up with hope and expectation but also steeling yourself for disappointment and thinking about who you’re going to ask next.  

So far we’ve got a great line up, with a few more speakers to be confirmed.  We’re hoping, with a massive ‘fingers crossed’ that we manage to get a certain person to join us on the day, but more of that in the New Year.

Now the big challenge is getting the hall packed on the day.  We want a good mix of people with mental health difficulties, professionals with mental health difficulties, people from the media and people from organisations. 

What we want is for people to take One in Four’s new, hopeful way of thinking and talking about mental health and wellbeing back home with them to their organisations, groups and projects.

We’re contacting all of the NHS Mental Health Communications teams that we can to see if they’d like to attend, along, and would love some more pubic sector bodies to get people down there on the day.

The conference is free; it has a great line up and is a bit of a ground breaker in terms of bringing people with mental health difficulties and professionals together on an even footing.  I just hope that everyone who would benefit from the conference can get along on the day.

And, remember, in recovery as it in everything, hope is always the first step to getting what you want.

Get your place sorted at the conference now