Rethink Your Mind is an innovative new mental health project from
Safe Inside Safe Outside (SISO), a well-being organisation run by service users
for service users, supported by Advance Housing and Leicestershire Partnership
NHS Trust. SISO encourages and empowers service users to engage in creative
outlets (e.g. music, writing) as part of the process of dealing with their conditions.
I found out about this project
through Pete Hirst (who is a member of the board of SISO). Pete has gained a
strong positive reputation with his band Refuge. I first met him when I taught Creative
Writing for ReMit (Leicester City Council's
education provision for adults with long-term mental health issues) at
the Watershed
Youth Centre. Pete was in my Tuesday afternoon group there. That’s
Pete in the photo above (all smiles, on the left) with Lyndsey Shaw, Manager of SISO.
Rethink Your Mind will feature a competition, starting October
2012, based around the positive brief, "With good mental health I have ...”.
SISO ran a similar competition last year, the entries of which were quite dark. They’re
going for a different outcome this year, hoping to create a new public profile for
mental health.
Cllr Manjula Sood, Assistant Mayor, who holds the Cabinet brief for Health and Adult Social Care (and, of course, Chair of Leicester Council of Faiths), speaks in support of SISO, of this project and of Pete in particular.
Lord Kamlesh Patel, Patron of
SISO, will host an award presentation for the completion in the House of Lords
next year.
When event kicks off, there are two dozen people in the room. By the
time I leave, some two hours later, that’s grown to at least three dozen. And the
evening wasn’t over yet as Refuge were yet to take the stage for a live set.
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