The past few years have seen profound challenges to the way of life established in the Western world since 1945.

The covid-19 pandemic has changed everything temporarily and seems likely to have lasting impacts on our everyday lives. Overwhelming evidence of accelerating climate change requires us to consider far-reaching changes to our economic structures and built environments. The internet now allows far greater individual connectivity than was previously possible, but this has brought with it widespread misinformation which threatens to undermine our political institutions.

At the same time, knowledge of the personal impacts of illness and disability, of the fragility and importance of mental health, of the diversity of human minds, and of the sentience and sapience of other animals, have all increased significantly. We should employ this renewed and still developing understanding of ourselves and our relations to our world in our responses to the challenges that characterise our times

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The aim of this project is to hold a festival on new models of public mental health, provide open-facing resources for education surrounding public mental health, and enrich the academic discourse found therein.