Population Mental Health Consortium’s Innovation Lab for Young People's Mental Health

The Population Mental Health Consortium held an Innovation Lab on Improving Population Mental Health for Children and Young People. Below, Joe Barker shares how the event went and what is happening since the Innovation Lab.

We’re incredibly proud to share the fantastic outcomes from our Innovation Lab: Improving Population Mental Health for Children and Young People.

Held on Friday, June 20, 2025, at the Midlands Art Centre in Birmingham, this event was co-led by Forward Thinking Birmingham, a dedicated mental health partnership for 0-25 year olds.

What we achieved

The day was designed to foster collaboration and spark new ideas, with key objectives including:

• Connecting potential partners from various sectors.
• Identifying promising areas for future collaboration.
• Pitching for seed funding to kickstart research collaborations focused on ‘upstream prevention’ in mental health.

We were thrilled to welcome approximately 70 attendees from over 40 different organisations, representing researchers, community groups, and the public sector. The event was brilliantly facilitated by Dennis Vergne from Basis, with invaluable youth leadership, experience, and expertise provided by Leaders Unlocked. We are committed to creating a culture where young people and adults collaborate with mutual respect and dignity.

Voices from our attendees

By prioritising an inclusive and supportive environment, we experienced really positive engagement. Here’s what some attendees shared:

• “We got a lot out of it.”
• “We really enjoyed working with the professionals.”
• “It was wonderful to attend the Innovation Lab on Friday! I’m really looking forward to hopefully attending more events like this in the future.”

Most importantly, attendees ‘felt heard and listened to’. Even challenges were welcomed, particularly around how we can better integrate young people’s experiences and feedback into projects.

Next steps for funding and collaboration

Following the successful pitches, follow-up meetings have been scheduled with each team to fairly allocate funding based on the agreed criteria.

Successfully funded projects will receive further information about deliverables and ongoing support from the Consortium. Stay tuned for more updates on how the final funding from our Innovation Lab has been allocated.

For more information on our Innovation Labs, please get in touch.

About the Consortium

Through a partnership between KCL and Thrive LDN, with many other organisations, the Consortium will work with stakeholders across public health, local government and voluntary organisations. Integral to our approach is also to work closely with people with lived experience of mental distress and adversities which impact mental health.

Population Mental Health will create new opportunities for population-based improvements in mental health across the country, focusing on children and young people, suicide and self-harm prevention and multiple long-term conditions.

This will allow for the identification and evaluation of population-level interventions which hold the greatest promise for the improvement of mental health and advancing equality. The aim is to build equity through the development of practice-based evidence and concerted knowledge exchange.