Exeter Phoenix are again running their “Bloom Festival” for Mental Health Awareness Week.
We’ve been invited by our friends at CoLab and Essence of Exeter to co-facilitate an event with a difference named “The Magical Connection.”
It’s an hour of humans having a conversation about mental health, using a ‘game’ of self-created cards to find the places where we are unique and where we are very similar. A space to listen for each other’s humanity, one conversation at a time.
When: 11th May at 11am
Bloom Festival: https://exeterphoenix.org.uk/events/the-magical-connection/
Online facilitators: Daphne van Run & Em Flint
Participants will:
- Co-create the topics of inquiry;
- Be offered a structure* to explore these safely;
- Gain insights into what makes them unique and what connects them to other;
- Ideally walk away with a dose of the magic that true connection brings: feelings of replenishment, feeling ‘related to’, seen, and accepted.
* ‘Rules of the game’:
- We honour each other’s dignity through confidentiality
- We listen for each other’s humanity
- We communicate with the intention to relate: we come with an open mind & an open heart.
About the workshop:
The Magical Connection is a pilot, in which a group of Exeter citizens and professionals have come together to re-imagine what a mental health offering rooted in community could look like. The offering is based on a person-centric approach to (mental) health, in which we fundamentally redistribute ‘power’ and access to resources.
About the facilitators:
Em Flint is a Community Development Worker with Recovery Devon and Peer Tutor with the Devon Recovery Learning Community. Em brings 25 years’ not-for-profit experience of facilitating groups and supporting people one-to-one. She has lived experience of mental illness, both for herself and as a carer, and is a diploma student with the Institute for Integrative Bodywork and Movement Therapy.
Daphne van Run is extensively trained in the art of authentic relating: over a decade Daphne has been running Authentic Relating Games Nights, Circles, Circling workshops, and Women’s Circles. Mental health ‘recovery’ and maintaining mentally healthy is at the heart of re-claiming what it is to be fully human and that is what Daphne cares about deeply.