Voice Collective are really excited to be collaborating with Holborn Community Association on this project! Click here for more information and to sign up!
Help us make an app!
Are you aged 16–25 with personal experience of hearing voices others don’t?
Would you be interested in helping us build an app for young voice-hearers who might be struggling to cope with their experiences?
Voice Collective are partnering with Hearing the Voice to develop an app for young people who hear voices, here is more of story below:
The project so far …
Back in 2019 Hearing the Voice launched Understanding Voices, a website for voice-hearers, family members and health professionals. The ‘Living with Voices’ section, written by voice-hearers for voice-hearers, is a particularly popular part of the site and we want to develop it into an app for young people.
Last year we ran a short consultation to check this idea out with young people who hear voices. They were really positive and told us some of the features that might make it useful. We’re really excited to have won funding to build the first phase of the app.
How can I get involved?
We’re now looking for a group of young people (aged 16–25) with first-hand experience of hearing voices who would like to work with us to build a pilot version of the app. We’re running a series of three online workshops in which we’ll co-design the app and develop its features together. You definitely don’t need any prior knowledge or experience of app design or digital technology to take part. We just want people who are interested in the idea and are keen to use their own lived experience to help make the app as useful as possible.
In the workshops, we’ll look at how aspects of our website Understanding Voices can be adapted specifically for young people and delivered via an app. We’ll also explore:
- What should the app look like and how should it feel to use? What kinds of colours, logos, graphic elements and imagery would be appealing? What kinds of things should we avoid?
- What kind of functions and features should the app have? We know from our initial consultation that people would like de-stigmatising information about hearing voices, people’s stories, personalised coping strategies and access to peer support via an app, but exactly what this might look like is still up for grabs.
- What kind of topics should be the focus of the information resources provided through the app? What formats are most appropriate? And what kinds of language and tone would be best?
When are the workshops on?
The workshops will take place on Zoom (an online meeting platform) at the following dates and times:
- Monday 21 March (6–7.30pm)
- Monday 28 March (6–7.30pm)
- Monday 4 April (6–7.30pm)
They will be facilitated by Rai Waddingham (voice-hearer, mental health trainer) and/or Sarah Morgan from Voice Collective, Ben Alderson-Day (a researcher) and Victoria Patton (a project manager). Whether you’re new to Zoom or an old hand at digital workshops, we’ll make sure everyone is fully supported to take part.
Do I need to go to all the workshops?
No. Ideally, we’d like people who want to be involved in this project to commit to all three of the workshops, but if you’re keen to be involved and can only make one or two that is absolutely fine.
Why should I take part?
We hope you’ll take part because you’d like to help shape an app for young people who hear voices and make it as useful as possible. Our commitment to you is that we will listen to your ideas and suggestions and use them in a meaningful way. Everyone who participates will also receive a generous shopping voucher per online workshop as a token of appreciation for their time and expertise.
Who is involved in this project?
The Living with Voices app is a collaboration between Hearing the Voice and the Institute for Medical Humanities (Durham University), Voice Collective (a London-based organisation that supports young people who hear, see or sense things others don’t), Rachel Waddingham (voice-hearer, mental health trainer) and Dr Sarah Parry (Lancaster University), who was the lead researcher on the Young Voices Study (Manchester Metropolitan University). It is funded by the Durham Economic and Social Research Council Impact Accelerator Awards, Research England and the Wellcome Trust.
Do I need to live in the UK to be part of this?
No. The co-design process is open to any young person who hears voices and would like to get involved. The workshops will take place in English and all times are Greenwich Mean Time.
How can we support you to participate?
We’d like to hear from young people of different genders, sexual orientations, (dis)abilities, ethnic and religious backgrounds. If there is anything we can do to help you to participate, please let us know.
I’d like to take part. What do I do?
To register an interest in taking part in the co-design workshops, please email Victoria Patton telling us a bit about yourself and why you’d like to participate. We look forward to hearing from you!
If you have any questions about this project, feel free to get in touch with Victoria.
Young Person Webinar – Amazing artwork!
Voice Collective are collaborating with Manchester Metropolitan University on a Special Interest Research Group funded by Emerging Minds. We will be looking at treatment and support options for children who hear voices, see visions and have other sensory experiences and beliefs. We held a Webinar on Friday 26th February where an artist put together all of your ideas into this amazing piece of artwork! Thank you to everyone who came and we look forward to keeping you updated with this group!
Creative art workshop at the Charles Dickens Museum – October 2020
We teamed up with the Charles Dickens Museum back in October 2020 half term to hold the ‘My Technicolour Self’ workshop! About ten young people signed up for the three day event and were supported by the museum team and an artist to create colourful self-portraits using paint, pastel, collage, coloured pencils or ink. Lots of great portraits were created, representing young peoples inner self or anything else that represented who they were. Please watch this space for some sharing of the portraits very soon!
Voice Collective travels to Boston for the 9th World Hearing Voices Congress
Latest News from our manager Eve…
It’s been an exciting and inspiring couple of weeks here at Voice Collective. HVN USA, the USA’s national hearing voices network, invited me to deliver two workshops at the 9th World Hearing Voices Congress, which they hosted in Boston, MA, across the 16th – 18th August.
The theme for this year’s Congress was A Revolution of Unseen Voices, creating a platform for the voices, stories and communities that have seldom been heard within traditional psychiatry and psychology. Keynote speakers included Sangoma Traditional Healer Gogo Ekhaya Esima, who spoke passionately about trauma and spiritual growth, ‘Liberation Psychologist’ David Walker, who charted the history of the oppression of the Yakama Nation in Washington, and Mind in Camden’s Akiko Hart, who spoke of our work together supporting voice hearers in prisons, forensic secure units and Immigration Removal Centres.
We were delighted to win an Innovation award from Intervoice, the International Hearing Voices Network, for our work supporting people in detention (including young offenders), and one of the young people who we’ve worked closely with over the years at Voice Collective, the brilliant Nikki Mattocks, received a Special Mention in the Inspiring Person category. An enormous well done to Nikki for all her stellar campaigning and peer support work!
More than 70 people attended the two Voice Collective workshops – “Somewhere Where I Can Be Me”: Creating & sustaining safe spaces for children & young people who hear distressing voices, and Death By A Thousand Cuts? Rethinking self-harming by children & young people who hear voices. There was some fantastic discussion about the need for peer support initiatives in other parts of the world, and what these might look like, as well as ways of reframing and responding differently to children and young people who hear voices and self-harm.
Over the next few months I’ll be following up with colleagues and friends across the States, Canada and Denmark, supporting them to develop their services for children and young people, within community and in-patient settings. We’ll also be using our learning from the Congress to develop extra resources for the website, so watch this space!
Nikki talking about Hearing Voices on Sky News
Nikki, a participant in our recent artistic collaboration with Wellcome Collection, courageously shared some of her own experiences of hearing voices that other people can’t on Sky News.
Talking out about voices and visions is no easy feat, but Nikki shows that it is possible to overcome difficult experiences and express them. We hope that seeing Nikki speak out gives other young people the courage they need to let others know that they’re struggling with voice and – if needed – access help.
To find out more about the ‘This is a Voice’ exhibition and project that Nikki took part in, see: https://wellcomecollection.org/exhibitions/voice-hearing-project
To see the artwork and words of other young people who hear voices, see: http://www.voicecollective.co.uk/about-voices/young-peoples-art-gallery/
To read other young people’s stories, see: http://www.voicecollective.co.uk/about-voices/personal-stories/
Learning to Live with the Voices in Your Head
Some experts think the problem is how doctors and society treat people who hear things, not the voices themselves.
Roc Morin in The Atlantic, 5 November 2014
“The first time that I heard this voice, I was very much frightened,” the prisoner testified. “When I heard it for the third time, I recognized that it was the voice of an angel … The voice said to me: ‘Go into France!’ I could bear it no longer.”
Joan of Arc, who spoke these words before her execution in 1431, is just one of many notable voice-hearers cited in the literature of Intervoice, an advocacy organization for individuals living with auditory hallucinations. Continue reading “Learning to Live with the Voices in Your Head”
Voice Collective on BBC London
In the run up to the 2011 BBC Children In Need appeal, Voice Collective was featured on BBC London News. ‘Ashley’ one of the young people who use our group and her mother share their experiences of voices, accessing Voice Collective and attending the group at Anna Freud Centre.
Rachel, the project manager, gives a brief overview of what we provide. One of the best parts of this is that Ashley had the opportunity to share how isolating it is for her to hear voices and how she just needs people to listen to her and believe her.
Watch online: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-15656353 Continue reading “Voice Collective on BBC London”
Many Children ‘Hear Voices’; Most Aren’t Bothered
Nearly 1 in 10 seven- to eight-year-olds hears voices that aren’t really there, according to a new study
By Reuters Health, Monday 25th January, 2010, http://tinyurl.com/reutersvoices
But most children who hear voices don’t find them troubling or disruptive to their thinking, the study team found. “These voices in general have a limited impact in daily life,” Agna A. Bartels-Velthuis of University Medical Center Groningen in The Netherlands wrote in an email to Reuters Health.
And parents whose children hear voices should not be overly concerned, she added. “In most cases the voices will just disappear. I would advise them to reassure their child and to watch him or her closely.”
Up to 16 percent of mentally healthy children and teens may hear voices, the researchers note in the British Journal of Psychiatry. While hearing voices can signal a heightened risk of schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders in later life, they add, the “great majority” of young people who have these experiences never become mentally ill. Continue reading “Many Children ‘Hear Voices’; Most Aren’t Bothered”
A First Class Recovery: From hopeless case to graduate
Eleanor Longden was a diagnosed schizophrenic and heard menacing voices in her head for 10 years. Now, she has fought back and has graduated with a brilliant honours degree in psychology.
By Nina Lakhani, The Independent, Sunday 25th October, 2009
Eleanor Longden was revising for her final university exams in May when she was interrupted by a hostile middle-aged man, who barked: Stop! You can’t do this; you’re going to fail. You’re not good enough to get a degree. Nine other people joined his tirade in a chorus of noisy abuse as Ms Longden, 27, tried to concentrate on studying.
You know what? she replied. You’re right: I do need to stop for a break. Thanks for reminding me.
Ms Longden has been hearing the same critical, often menacing, internal voices for about 10 years. Every day, the dominant male speaks to her in an authoritative tone. The others back him up and the messages are always the same: you Continue reading “A First Class Recovery: From hopeless case to graduate”
