COMMONING ACROSS OTHERWISE: a collective letter-writing workshop 🌍💌
Note this workshop takes place across 2 sessions:
Sunday, 29th November 2026
Saturday, 16th January 2027
What happens when stories of madness, and survival travel across borders?
The Mental Health Social Justice Network would like you to join us in a letter exchange initiated by a number of collectives based in London, Barcelona, Montevideo, São Paulo, and Trieste. The proposal is to connect in correspondence with other mad voices across the globe, as well as to reconnect with mad voices that were silenced.
The full invitation can be read online here, and will be read out publicly in Barcelona next Friday 6th November at an event hosted by Entrarafuera - a health activist group organising around the creation of alternative approaches to care. It will then be brought (back) to London by members of the MHSJN.
Across two workshops, taking place on Sunday 29th November 2026 and Saturday 16th January 2027, we will gather together and - through conversation, readings, sharing, and prompts, collectively draft a letter in response to this invitation.
We will start our first workshop off with a collective reading and discussion of the invitation. For this workshop we also invite you to bring an object - it can be anything! including a picture, a line, or paragraph of a text that speaks in some way to the themes outlined, and which could serve as a starting point for sharing, listening, and experimenting with telling stories and constructing narrative among us.
The second workshop will involve a process of putting together our letter, based on everything we have gathered in the first workshop.
Our letter will then go to its next stop in Montevideo, Uruguay. From there to São Paulo, and on to Trieste, before circling back to Barcelona.
We hope this initiative will contribute to building a conversation across borders about our experiences and encounters with madness, distress, mental suffering, or psy institutions; to sharing knowledge of international histories, struggles, and initiatives supporting the sort of care we need; and to energising our dreams and imagination.
The dates of the workshops are:
Sunday, 29th November 2026, 12.30-4pm (light snacks 12.30, starting at 1pm)
Bloc, Arts One - ground floor, Queen Mary University, Entrance on Mile End Road (5 mins from Mile End Tube/Stepney Green)
Saturday, 16th January 2027, 1-4pm
venue to be confirmed
In solidarity,
Mental Health Social Justice Network
Commoning across otherwise - an open invitation:
https://mhsjnetwork.wordpress.com/commoning-across-otherwise/