Open Up conference blog - back to reality

Back to life, back to reality - that was on the radio this morning and it's a fitting song for the Open Up team who are coming back down to earth after a couple of months of living, breathing, eating and sleeping the Open Up conference!

It certainly was an action packed day. After a brief warm-up exercise, our fantastic chair Tina (who we discovered has something of a penchant for telling naughty jokes!) kicked things off and got the crowd going nicely. It's important to say at this point that we couldn't have wished for a better chair - just the right blend of energy and humour - she was brilliant.

Then double act Paul Farmer and Sue Baker took to the stage to introduce our work and talk about how we fit in to the wider work of Mind and Time to Change. They were followed by our 2009 Initiative Khamoshi, who spoke movingly about their experience of developing a play about domestic violence.

After questions from the floor (which included a lot of support for Khamoshi) and a quick break, we went into the workshops. These were repeated in the afternoon and included sessions on Project Management and dealing with the media. I got to sit in on a great workshop about Black and Minority Ethnic issues in mental health, which included presentations from Shift and a screening of Azeem Khan's excellent short film "Lithium".

After lunch we had a special screening of short films from Open Up, Time to Change, and two pieces made by our Initiatives, including John Church's animation Life Without Substance. Then music from Growing Minds, and we were all so pleased to see that Maddy Ralls came back from her travels in time to join Alistair on the stage - a real treat to see them together again.

Then it was time for our panel discussion. Mind's Mark Boulding, Sheila McKechnie's Harmit Kambo, community activist Karen Machin and Shift's Robert Westhead came together onstage to debate the key issues in the future of the anti-discrimination movement. Questions from delegates were combined with questions submitted via the Time to Change facebook page and covered themes such as the DDA, hate crime, language and diagnosis and access to services.

After a repeat of the workshops, the conference reconvened for feedback and closing comments, and then it was time to draw the winners of our raffle. All delegates who filled in an evaluation form got a ticket, and one lucky person walked away with our big prize, a gorgeous throw handmade in India by a contact of Khamoshi's.

Finally, all that remained was to cut the absolutely ginormous cake Charlotte had brought with her! We were very impressed by the stamina of the delegates - most people stayed right until the end, and we hope the cake was a good enough reward. I was even more surprised at this point to hear the room burst into spontaneous song! This is no joke - Tina had everyone singing "We'll meet again" to round off the day - well, some more loudly than others...

And that was our conference. But we're not the only ones who have been talking about it. Did any of you catch the frenzy of tweets and facebook comments that went on during the day? The very helpful Time to Change social media team were on standby throughout the day, picking up our messages and posting them via Twitter and the Facebook page.

These were then picked up by delegates who were tweeting and commenting from the venue. Thanks to the likes of Quinonostante and markoneinfour, people who coudln't attend the conference were able to see some of the topics being debated.

The debate went far beyond the main plenary room. Social networkers sitting behind their computers across the country were engaging with the Facebook discussions, so the online activity matched the offline activity.

So now we're back in the Open Up office, reflecting on our experience and looking forward to harnessing some of the knowledge and talent we've found in our anti-discrimination Learning Resource. (more details coming soon).

And what's our take on how it all went? Well, we know that we worked hard, but I think I can speak for all of us when I say that seeing such a fantastic group of people come together to link up and support each other in their mutual fight against discrimination was a good reward. Now we owe quite a few people some massive thank yous!

Tina, all our fantastic speakers, contributors and exhibitors, our colleagues who supported us, and most of all, the people who participated both at the venue and at home: thank you for being so inspiring and making it a really special day for us all.