Preview: Freedom of Mind Festival 2017

Freedom of Mind celebrates the mental health that we all have, opening up conversations with a series of though-provoking discussions. The volunteer team ran their first festival in 2016, and are back again this year with a wide-ranging programme of events, including discussions of what mental health means to men and how to speak about mental health in BAME communities.

Ahead of this year’s festival, running from October 6-14 2017, we spoke to co-founder and managing director of the festival, Katie Finch, and marketing and PR volunteers Cai Burton and Hannah-Jayne Smith.

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Katie – you helped to make last year’s event – the first ever Freedom of Mind Festival – happen. How did it come about?

Katie: The original idea comes from Ella Marshall – she was a member of Bristol City Youth Council at the time, and one of their campaigns was around mental health. She started thinking, ‘Why can’t we do a celebration of mental health?’. She wanted to do something for the whole city.

I thought it sounded awesome, so on the back of an envelope we scribbled out a plan, and it went from there. We didn’t take no for an answer when people said it would be too difficult. If you really want to do something, you can push through and do it.

We managed to secure funding and then it became real. Around the start of 2016, we put a call-out on social media and asked if anyone wanted to help us. We had an amazing response from that – over 100 people said they were interested. It was really nice to get that, and we were able to build up an amazing team of people. Some had lived experience of mental health issues; some didn’t. We built up a committee, then became a company, and in 2016 ran the first festival.

Ella Marshall on stage at the festival she founded aged just 17

Why do you feel that these sorts of events are important?

Hannah-Jayne: We’re in a world where there’s no time. We don’t speak to people properly – someone goes ‘I’m sad’ and we go ‘Oh baby, you’ll be ok’, put WhatsApp down and carry on with our emails. What I hope that we can achieve in this festival is that we understand that sometimes our time, which is the most invaluable thing we have, can save someone.

The need for this outlet, and the support for it, is huge. It is a ripple effect – you get one person speaking about it and that person goes and talks to another person about it. We have aims to be huge, but we also want to connect to people on a very personal level. It’s so important that people talk – that starts an engagement, a conversation, an education and a culture, that can then start a huge change.

Katie: It’s a proactive rather than reactive approach. At the moment, mental health services are built so that it’s not until you’re at crisis point that you receive any kind of help, and even then you’re put on a six-month waiting list because the services just aren’t there and there isn’t enough money. When you then do get the help, it’s really high-quality, but getting to that stage is really difficult.

By having these conversations and helping to educate people, we’re developing a community-led support network for people, that helps them know that they are not alone, and helps them deal with things before they get to crisis point.

Artwork by Cai Burton became communal art therapy at last year’s festival

How will this year’s festival differ from last year?

Cai: We learned a lot from that first one – like with anything, you make a lot of mistakes along with the things that go well, and we were all trying something new. It was really great to see what worked and go from there, and there was a really great response to it.

Hannah-Jayne: This year’s festival is going to be bigger, better, stronger!

Katie: Because we’ve got so much more experience, there are small things we’ve learned from last year so now we can tweak it slightly and do it differently. Hopefully it’ll be much smoother. Last year we thought we might get 150 people through the doors, and then we had well over 800 people turn up throughout the week.

We also took a lot of feedback from our events – we didn’t want to do something and have no idea how well it had gone. Looking at that data, we could see that some events had a gender imbalance, with more women turning up to events – which we expected – but this year we’re trying to address that imbalance.

Cai: Ethnicity was also a big thing for us, as within the BAME community, mental health issues take on a completely different light, and it was something we needed to understand more. So this year, going forward, we’ve actively identified that as something we want to build upon, and that reflects in the programme.

The 2016 Freedom of Mind team with Bristol mayor Marvin Rees

What do you hope the festival  will do – is it just about sparking conversation?

Cai: Having people come up and talk to us and say, ‘You’ve helped me think about things in a different way’ – helping someone on a personal level – is really important.  A lot of these events may open up things in people, and we hope that they feel touched and able to talk and have conversations. As volunteers on the ground at events, we’re not claiming to be able to fix things for people, but we have the experience and knowledge to point people in the right direction when they’re discussing such personal and emotional things.

Another really important thing is giving people the skills to help others. For people that do feel very confident and comfortable in their own mental health, we’re showing how they can support loved ones, who can often feel so alone and need that gentle support.

Hannah-Jayne: We’re not professionals, we’re not psychologists, but it is collaborative and we are there to support and to speak.

Chanté Jay speaking at last year’s festival

This is just your second year of running the festival, but are there any big ideas in the pipeline for the future?

Cai: One of the things we look at for inspiration is Pride. We’re not saying we’re going to be as big as Pride next year – you never know! – but that sort of big celebration would be amazing for mental health.

Katie: One of the things we’re hoping to do to is one-off events that happen occasionally; once every few months. Also, we’re currently in the process of creating a series of workshops that we can take into schools and youth clubs, and also into work places, to talk to people about mental health in a slightly different way.

Hannah-Jayne: It would also be amazing to have that visibility all year round – at the moment we’re sticking to one week, but mental health doesn’t just happen between October 6-14 . We want it to be in everyone’s minds and We want it to be huge.

Freedom of Mind Festival 2017 takes place from October 6-14 2017. To find out more or book tickets to events, visit www.freedomofmind.org.uk.

Read more: Mental health: ‘Resilience is nor the opposite of crying’