Welcome back to a quick update from Carer activist, author and poet Matthew McKenzie. This update is from an event I performed at which was held over the Chestnut Community centre over at Haringey. The event was a spoken word event, which was part of Haringey Service User and Carer Forum.

A quick note is you can actually download poems and listen to songs if you scroll to the end of my update of the spoken word event.

The Haringey Service User and Carer Forum aims to provide a place for past and present service users and carers to learn about new developments and to provide feedback on services.

The forum provides an opportunity for people to discuss their experiences and to share views with staff so that their ideas can help to influence the way services operate. This meeting is organised by Barnet, Enfield and Haringey Mental Health Trust.

Barnet Enfield and Haringey Mental Health NHS Trust provides integrated mental health services in Barnet, Enfield and Haringey, and also provides community health services in Enfield. They look after people’s mental and physical health in hospitals or in the community, and provide a range of mental health services for young people and adults.

So for the 8th of July, I attended the spoken word event hosted by Martin Weegmann who is a Clinical Psychologist & Group Analyst at the mental health trust. We were joined by many who also performed, songs, spoken word, poetry and art.

Some of the art presented at the event, I managed to take some pictures. This was in order to help promote the work by Nicola Newman

You can view more of Nicola’s art at her Instagram page.

https://www.instagram.com/visions.of.balance/

I was joined by Jo Lambert who does poetry to help express mental wellbeing, mental health experiences and also carer experiences. Jo and myself have a poetry circle to help promote carer awareness. You can watch our performance off my YouTube Channel.

We also heard excellent poems, songs and spoken word performed by others at the event. Obviously I could not record them, but I spoke to a few who loved to have their work shared off my blog site.

A number of songs were performed by Victoria Lamb who has her songs hosted off her soundcloud page, which is linked below.

I enjoyed being part of this excellent group that has a focus of community empowerment.

I often try attend the SU forum when I can as Barnet Enfield and Haringey Mental Health NHS Trust are supportive of my work engaging with carers. I look forward to the next spoken word event.

You can also check out many of the poetry from those with lived experience from the following book which can be viewed below.

Preview and download book below

Thanks for dropping by.