Leading minds and mental health campaigners, including Jonny Benjamin MBE, will gather in the city next month, for the HOPE conference, a dynamic event designed to bring together those who share a commitment to challenging stigmas around mental health.
The conference will be built around a key programme of speakers, but is designed to be extremely collaborative, offering delegates who provide support, training and awareness in mental health and other social issues, the opportunity to shape the agenda of roundtable discussions and workshops. Jo Emmerson Director of The Speakers Collective, explains:
“If you are passionate about smashing stigma and changing the mental health dialogue, we want you in our conference room. You might be a volunteer, an HR director, an MHFA trainer, CEO, counsellor, nurse, academic or writer. This is about learning from each other, sharing and collaborating; a celebration of what all these voices can do every day to affect change.”
The event is being hosted in Birmingham on Thursday 11 November by The Speakers Collective, a social enterprise designed to facilitate important conversations within the workplace and the wider community, along with Chasing The Stigma, a national mental health charity.
Award-winning mental health campaigner and writer, Jonny Benjamin MBE, will be leading the panel of speakers. Jonny is a leading mental health campaigner, author of the Stranger on the Bridge and the Book of Hope. In 2019 he founded his own young person’s mental health charity Beyond.
Jonny Benjamin MBE, Heidi Stewart, Jake Mills and Steve Gilbert OBE
Also joining conversations across the key programme, will be Jake Mills, stand-up comedian, writer and CEO of national mental health charity, Chasing the Stigma, along with Steve Gilbert, who was appointed OBE for services to mental health in 2019.
The event is sponsored by BHSF, a not-for-profit health and wellbeing provider that helps keep millions of employees physically, mentally and financially healthy. BHSF CEO, Heidi Stewart will also be speaking, to shine a light on how specialist mental health services can help build better workplaces.
A host of roundtables will be taking place across the day, including ‘Leadership in an anxious world’ and ‘Self-care in a virtual community – successful social marketing’.
The Hope Conference will take place at The Studio on Canon Street on Thursday 11 November, from 9.30am to 4.30pm. Tickets cost £65 and are available from: www.hopeconference.co.uk