Aye Mind – engaging young people in mental health discussions

At our ‘Mental Health and Wellbeing in Schools’ conference earlier this month we hosted an Aye Mind gif-making workshop. As some of you will have noticed from the event twitter feed #mentalhealthinschools the interactive session really engaged delegates and provided them with a different way of learning and thinking about how to involve young people in mental health discussions.

As part of our ongoing conversations around ‘Education and Child Welfare’ and ‘User-focused public services’, Charlotte Fountaine – who leads the online campaign side of Aye Mind – explains how you can run a mini Aye Mind image workshop at your next training event. The workshop aims to show participants fun, simple ways to engage young people in creating mental wellbeing messages and images that they can share with their peers – all with the aim of encouraging young people to engage-in and open-up to discussions around mental health and wellbeing.

How to Run a Mini Image Workshop

To start, you will need

• Post-its
• Sharpies
• Mini speech bubbles
• The Aye Mind hashtag – #AyeMind – and the hashtag of your training event
• Scissors
• Play doh
• Large bright paper
• Lego
• Cameras
• Camera phones

Optional extras

• Print and hang ‘topic’ and ‘question’ prompts to put around the room

• An Aye Mind hand out (click to download)

• A visual guide explaining the workshop

Agenda

Before the workshop starts set up the room by hanging the printed prompts and have all the equipment to make images to hand.

Presentation introducing Aye Mind and the workshop

Let the participants know what the plan is for the workshop. Talk about Aye Mind’s aims, background, the digital toolkit, the young people’s manifesto and the young people’s gifs.
10 mins

Icebreaker ­– 100 names and quotes

Speech bubbles – Making messages

Image making – Taking the messages and making images to share online

The timing of the workshop can be adjusted in accordance with how much time you have.

Below are some of the images made by delegates at the recent ‘Mental Health and Wellbeing in Schools’ conference (just click to enlarge)…

Any questions about running the workshop, or feedback on how the guide works for you please email: charlotte@wearesnook.com