We were delighted to join our partners at City Lit for this year’s Mental Wealth Festival. The Festival is the first physical one since the start of the pandemic, representing a wonderful opportunity to meet old friends and introduce new ones to the power of pictures.
Beyond Words hosted three events throughout the week, beginning with a fascinating roundtable discussion hosted by our Founder Professor Sheila the Baroness Hollins and City Lit Principal Mark Malcolmson. The talk was headed Caring for Mental Wealth and explored how parents and carers of children and adults can help develop mental wealth in the people they care about.
With the UK currently in a mental health crisis and with growing stresses for families, it is imperative to find ways of supporting parents and carers to build their own resilience and strategies for better mental health. Better mental health services in local communities are part of this, but how families, schools, employers, and communities respond to children with mental health issues is also key. Our panel were asked to reflect on how parents and carers can support better mental wealth.
Later in the week on Thursday 13 October we had the opportunity to introduce a whole new range of people to the incredible positive effects visual literacy can bring. We hosted a live panel-style book club themed around the power of pictures. A panel including our Founder Sheila, City Lit Principal Mark, self-advocate and Beyond Words author Julie Anderson, creator of Feelings Groups Marie Grant and Beyond Words School Mentor Andrew Browne, were joined by an audience of nearly 40 people to read an extract from our book A Refugee’s Story. It was a moving session, with audience members joining to share their own feelings, stories and emotions as we read the story page by page together.
Finally, our team hosted an afternoon book club in the same style as our community clubs, demonstrating how they work in practice as well as the impact our pictures have. Reading through books together page by page, we were joined by over 20 people and hosted four reading groups. One of our attendees said that they “enjoyed thinking about what makes us happy” while reading Feeling Cross and Sorting it Out.
We’d like to thank our partners in the Mental Wealth Festival City Lit for a wonderful week of thoughtful sessions and events about improving mental wealth, as well as everyone who attended our events over the course of the week and joined us to discuss mental wealth and the power of pictures. Further thanks to our other Mental Wealth Festival partners the National Gallery, the Royal Opera House, MAD World Summit, Thrive LDN, NHS South London and Maudsley Foundation Trust, Frazzled Café and 64 Million Artists.
If you attended one of our sessions and would like to hear more about our work, please email our Communications Manager Emily Magdij to sign up for our mailing list or learn more about our book clubs and schools work.