Medium grants - Round One

Project: Raise Your Voice

Organisation: The I Choir

Region: North West (Liverpool)

Led by their Musical Director, this Liverpool based community choir will hold song writing workshops for the local community. The choir is made up of a mixture of people with and without mental health problems, and the themes of the workshops will be around talking about mental health openly.

The fun lyric writing process will engage people in meaningful and open dialogue about mental health and help dispel myths and stigma. At the end of each workshop there will be lyrics for a song expressing the thoughts and feelings of the group. These lyrics will be put to music by the Musical Director and sung and recorded by the I Choir. The finished tracks will be available on CD and to download. The I Choir will also perform the songs in public as the workshops progress.

Watch I Choir Director Mike talk about what Raise Your Voice is hoping to achieve

Project: Faith, Culture and Mental Health – the hidden story

Organisation: Mind in Tower Hamlets and Newham in partnership with East London Mosque and the University of East London Student Union

Region: London (Tower Hamlets and Newham)

A team of volunteers, staff and local organisations from Tower Hamlets and Newham will work together to find out how people from the diverse faith communities of these two London boroughs think and feel about mental health. They'll research attitudes, perceptions and experiences of mental health through focus groups, one-to-one discussions and events.

They'll feed the information that they gather into story telling performances and an information booklet. These tools will be used to promote a greater understanding of mental health and reduce stigma and discrimination in faith and cultural communities.

Shahan from Mind in Tower Hamlets and Newham tells us more about the Faith, Culture and Mental Health project

Project: Mis-understanding

Organistion: BRAP in partnership with Youth Space

Region: West Midlands

Mis-Understanding is a project, run in the West Midlands, which will bring together young people with and without personal experience of mental health problems to think about the negative language that people can use when they're talking about around mental health. They'll put together interactive resources which will help other young people discuss mental health more positively.  The work will focus on addressing the double discrimination, often experienced when people have a mental illness and are also from a Black or Minority Ethnic community.  Young people will be trained as learning mentors, using the resources in schools, youth clubs, and voluntary organisations to start conversations about mental health.

Project: Let’s Talk East Durham

Organisation: East Durham Community Development Trust

Region: North East, Yorkshire and Humber (East Durham)

30 volunteers will work together to organise and run events in public spaces around East Durham. Half of the volunteers will have experience of mental health problems and half will not, but through working as a team, they’ll learn from each other and help challenge stereotypes of people with mental illness.

Project: The Cambridge Roadshow to Recovery

Organisation: Lifecraft

Region: East of England

People with mental health problems will work with other community groups to put on a roadshow, starting conversations about mental health across the county. The roadshow will tour community fairs, festivals and town centres, using a mixture of visual arts, poetry, music and singing to tell real-life stories to the public.

Project: Let’s get talking

Organisation: Sheffield Mind in partnership with Pakistan Advice and Community Association and Sheffield Health and Social Care NHS Trust.

Region: North East, Yorkshire and Humber

People with experience of mental health problems will make a film that looks at stigma and discrimination across the generations in Pakistani and Somali communities. Together with a “walk and talk” training tool, they'll then take the film out into different communities to help start discussion.

Project: Different Buttons

Organisation: Red Rose Chain in partnership with Inside Out Community and Norfolk and Suffolk Foundation Trust.

Region: East of England

Different Buttons is a touring theatre production exploring attitudes to mental health problems in the last 150 years. In the interval and after the show, actors, crew and trained volunteers with personal experience of mental health problems will chat to the public, sharing their experiences and starting discussion.

Project: the Cope Up Monologues – Black, Gay and Mentally Ill

Organisation: Naz Project London

Region: London

This project aims to educate people about the issues facing people from Black and Minority Ethnic communities who are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender. It will tackle the relationship between mental illness, stigma and discrimination and homophobia by supporting performing monologues to different community groups. The performances will be followed by small group discussions about the issues that have been raised during the show.

Project: Tea & Talk

Organisation: Dorset Mental Health Forum in partnership with Dorset Healthcare University NHS Foundation Trust

Region: South West (Dorset)

The project for whom tackling mental health stigma and discrimination is a piece of cake! People with personal experience of mental health problems will go into workplaces and schools across Dorset to facilitate the fun and friendly workshop, Tea & Talk. People will be encouraged to talk openly about mental health over tea and cake. They will be asked to make individual and organisational pledges, and be provided with support and resources to turn their new knowledge into stigma busting action.

In Phase One of Time to Change, Helen Hutchings received funding through our Open Up scheme to develop the Tea & Talk project. In Phase Two of Time to Change, Tea & Talk received funding in Round One of the grants fund to expand the project.
Helen talks about where her ideas came from and how the project works.

Project: Reach Out Challenge

Organisation: Hear Us

Region: London (Croydon)

This Croydon-based project will work with 10 organisations that people with mental health problems regularly come into contact with. They will help these organisations – including the police, local job centre and local council - to think about the way they interact with people with mental illness. People with personal experience of mental health problems will talk informally to members of staff in their canteens and staff rooms. This will encourage staff members to change the way they think about mental health and will promote an environment in which employees feel more able to talk openly about their own mental wellbeing.

Read about the feedback the Reach Out Challenge has received so far.

Jane and Peter from Hear Us talk about their project