A big thank you to everyone who came along to North Tyneside’s World Mental Health Day event last week. There was another great turnout for the event, with approximately 200 people coming along to help create a warm and welcoming environment on the day. The day was an opportunity for people to connect with people they know, may not have seen for a while as well as make new connections, all while enjoying some live music for local band, Keytones and NTDF’s choir, engaging in some creative activity with Supporting Stars and #TynesideRocks , tucking into the buffet kindly put together by Cullercoats Crescent Club and winning some extraordinary prizes on the raffle and tombola!

As part of Launchpad North Tyneside’s work, we support people with mental health difficulties to co create this annual World Mental Health Day event in North Tyneside alongside people who work in the sector. It really is a joy to co-facilitate the planning meetings alongside Dave Miller from AIM, it’s so important for people to be able to dip in and out where they can, contributing when they feel able and for group members to have a real sense of ownership. The process is as important as the day itself, a true example of co-production. A genuine thank you to the many organisations and individuals play their part in making the event such a success and each year, it goes from strength to strength, this event takes months of planning and preparation and it’s impossible to emphasise enough the amount of hard work and creativity that goes into this by so many.

Huge thanks go to:

• Public Health (North Tyneside Council) for financially supporting the even
• Cullercoats Crescent Club for providing us with use of their venue again this year and putting on another great buffet
• Tyne and Wear Archive Museums Wellbeing Programme who provided us with a room for our planning meetings
• Key Enterprises for their colourful contributions to the buffet and ever wonderful Key Tones, back again this year by popular demand
• Christina (Key Enterprise) for organising the truly impressive tombola with what seemed like a record breaking number of prizes!
• Anthony for kindly photographing the event again for us this year
• Lara for making sure the juke box was always playing and to everyone who submitted their song choices
• Supporting Stars for their “Random Acts of Kindness” board
• North Tyneside Disability Forum for their wonderful choir singing songs that we could all join in with
• Ami from North Tyneside Talking Therapies and Wendy from CNTW for hosting the day, keeping everyone to time and knowing what was coming up next
• Helen (Linskill Centre) for her hilarious laughter workshop that took us from nervously laughing to genuine belly laughs extraordinarily quickly!
• Phoenix Detached Youth Project for sharing the process of the newly developed ‘Help Yourself’ leaflet
• All the survivors who so generously shared their poetry to be heard at the event, they were so emotive
• Aimee from I’m Not Disordered for sharing the role social media can play in suicide prevention
• Healthwatch North Tyneside for keeping us all topped up with biscuits and to Jo for the amazing cakes
• Bill’s Fish Bar and By The Bay for providing paper cups for all of our tea and coffee
• All our generous donors for the raffle prizes and to Josie and Keith for selling raffle tickets
• Molly Sheldon, this years competition winner for the poster design
• All our information Stall holders: Launchpad North Tyneside, Key Enterprises, North Tyneside Carers Centre, Weekend Friends, LEAPS, Supporting Stars, North Tyneside Talking Therapies, Healthwatch North Tyneside, Cumbria, Northumberland, Tyne and Wear Foundation Trust, Rape Crisis Tyneside and Northumberland, Linskill Centre, NT LIFE Recovery College, North Tyneside Disability Forum and many more who were there on the day, having conversations, sharing information and connecting people with support.
• Everyone who helped out on the day as well as all those who helped plan the event.