BLOG: Come with me to REWIRE, a youth mental health summit

Last weekend, I attended Boundless Theatre’s youth mental health summit REWIRE, at Stanley Arts in Croydon.

I was there to film some content and interview a couple of people but once I had arrived and started to participate in activities, it felt as though I had reawakened a creative side of me that was hidden away.

@thriveldn come with me to rewire, a youth mental health summit created by young people for young people!🩷 it was a really lovely day filled with so many fun things to do and fun people to be with and i’d definitely go to an event like this again!!🩵 you can find a whole list of the creatives that helped put this event together on boundless theatre’s instagram!!🩵🩷 #ThriveLDN #London #Croydon #MentalHealth #Youth #YouthMentalHealth #StanleyArts #RewireSummit #Creativity #YoungPeople #MentalHealthAwareness #FreeEvent #Event #FYP #FreePizza #ArtsAndCrafts #Craft ♬ Own Zone – Guerilla Toss

Being a free event on a Saturday in February, it was unknown the number of people that would show up. It could’ve been either packed or completely empty but I think that the amount of people that did end up attending was a perfect amount.

As it wasn’t super busy, you could switch between activities quite easily and put your time and effort into whatever art you were creating, whether it was a collage or if it was a poem.

It was also a lot easier to meet people and make a few new friends (which I did!) and have mindful conversations about their own mental health and background. Talking to other young people and learning their experiences was really impactful as it showed how much an event like REWIRE was needed.

The first activity I participated in was “Mindful Mandalas” with Bluerskies Mindful Creatives, who run creative workshops, usually in their local area in Romford. This is where decorated small circles, with colouring or collage, that eventually became part of a larger mural. I hadn’t really picked up a colouring pen or pencil in a while to create a piece of artwork but after making one, I ended up making at least another 5 of them.

Whilst I was creating my little pieces of art, I was accompanied by the people running the activity, Hannah (@hannahdaviscreative) and Charlotte (@bluerskiescreatives). I ended up lingering around their table the most because they were both such kind people and a wonderful presence to be around, so it kinda became my safe place in the building.

We also ended up having our own conversations around the discussion of creativity and mental health and came to the conclusion that using art as an outlet for your mental wellbeing is one of the best ways to process what’s going on in your head.

Another interesting topic brought up was the idea of how young people tend to look elsewhere than their local area for an event or activity and how this ends up leading to a lack of community and a lack of engagement with young people. This is why an event like REWIRE is so important! Providing young people with a day full of fun activities in their local area is a great way to build a feeling of community and also for them to just meet other young people.

Something that was very well spoken of throughout the event was The Poetry Takeaway (@thepoetrytakeaway) which was set up like a takeaway truck, except it was for poetry. It was so good, there was a queue! The general basis of the activity is that you would go up to the truck and talk to one of the poets, order a poem for either yourself or another person. I chose to have a poem written for another person. They would then ask you a series of questions about interests, favourite tv shows, movies, music and so on.

After ordering your poem, you’ve got to wait only 20 minutes before picking it up from them, which is an incredible time frame considering what they had written. My poem was amazing. You could really tell that they were truly listening to everything you were saying and taking in all the information you could give them as it was all weaved into the poem they had written. It’s also an interesting concept as who would have ever thought of a poetry takeaway? Genius!

There were also other activities such as crocheting, making your own “-zine” and acting workshops too. I also made a collage with Allie’s Art Club (@alliesartclub) about my “Internal Landscape”.

Personally, my favourite part of the day was meeting new people and just talking to everyone. I truly felt as though I had made a lot of new friends whilst simultaneously becoming aware of all the different creative activities hanging around in different parts of London.

I definitely felt uplifted and rewired!

If you’d like to see more about my weekend at rewire, check out my TikToks. I’m still uploading a few more interviews from the day so watch out for those in the coming days.