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!
We’re looking for a small group of young people who are willing to use their experiences to work in partnership with Voice Collective, an academic and an artist to create a new way of helping people understand what it can be like to hear voices, have visions or other similar sensory experiences. We welcome young people no matter what kind of voices or visions they experience … or what they call them. You don’t need a diagnosis to take part.
20 August, 1.30 – 4.30pm
This workshop explores issues of power and powerlessness through creative activities. We will use art to try out different ways of finding power in our own lives, in our relationships and as a group. It’s not just about the personal stuff, though – we will be looking at how we can challenge stigma and negative stereotypes about voice-hearing.
Does your child hear voices or see visions?
Understanding Children & Young People who Hear Voices: A Fresh Approach
Voice Collective Group Facilitation Training (3 days)
Supporting Young Refugees & Asylum Seekers who Hear Voices
Inspired by our creative arts project with the 
Listen Up! is a summer arts roadshow run by Rai Waddingham (someone works with Voice Collective and hears voices herself) and Mary Robson (a creative facilitator) especially for young people who have personal experience of hearing voices or seeing visions.
Around 1 in 5 young people hear voices or see visions at some point in their lives. But, in our society, lots of people don’t feel able to speak about it. We want to change that.
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