The Tomorrow Project attended ThinkFest 2022 in Derbyshire last the weekend!

Tom and Briony from our Derbyshire suicide bereavement team went along to the event organised by Ellie Scott at The Georgia Bird Foundation in Chesterfield on the 14th May for a brilliant (albeit boiling) day full of live music, inspirational speakers, and lots of talk about mental health in line with Mental Health Awareness Week. The aim of the event was to get people talking about mental health, raising awareness and reducing stigma in the process.

There were lots of services from around Derbyshire, both local and national, covering all aspects of mental health. Insight IAPT Derbyshire and Derbyshire Recovery and Peer Support Service were there to talk about the services they offer, Survivors of Bereavement by Suicide (SoBS) introduced their new service in Chesterfield, and Junction Arts, a Derbyshire-based community arts charity, spoke about their workshops, festivals and events available to the community to help improve wellbeing and inspire change. It was a fantastic opportunity to meet with other representatives of other services and find out where we can signpost our clients to.

The music was amazing and covers of songs like Proud Mary and Valerie even got the passers by and growing crowd dancing! We even had a number 1 country singer/songwriter provide us with a few songs in a spontaneous performance! It was lovely to speak to some people within the community who had directly benefitted from the service we provide within the county.
It was a brilliant and fun event to be involved in, and such an important one too! We all have mental health, and 1 in 4 of us will experience a mental health condition at some point in our lives. And yet, mental health is a subject that not many people like to talk about. This is why events like ThinkFest are so important, and we were honoured to be asked to join in.