We Are Aware Community Interest Company

We continue to support an ever-growing mental health lived experience peer community (currently around 90 individuals) through a variety of in-person and online groups and activities along with a Facebook support group. Our main Thinking Out Loud peer support sessions have been kindly supported by Quartet Community Foundation, with further support from the Allen Lane Foundation to explore a Journalling. Through feedback from those we support we have evolved our sessions further to incorporate craft themed sessions and games afternoons. We’ve also used feedback from those we support create more dynamic, interactive discussion sessions. We have continued our weekly Walk&Talks and fortnightly Yoga sessions as well as introducing two sets of Tai Chi taster sessions for those we support. We have introduced regular peer/self-advocacy sessions working in partnership with The Advocacy People. These have also allowed us the space to invite third party agencies such as Alliance Home Debt Advisors and Nailsea Disability Initiative to give informative talks to those we support. We have continued our involvement in the wider community through public events- both to raise We Are Aware’s profile, but also to raise mental health awareness generally. Our annual World Mental Health Day Ambling Band led walk continued this year in Clevedon, and we were invited back by Edwards Vacuums in Clevedon to give a presentation about our work. January saw our Making Waves, Moving Voices showcase of our Somatic Movement and Dance group spliced with poetry from the We Are Aware community. Feedback from the event was incredible and as a result Clevedon Community Bookshop are supporting us to get a volume of the community poetry published. We have developed a excellent working relationship with Becky Walsh a local comedian and personal development coach. This has seen Becky delivering workshops to those we support, as well as staging her Burnout comedy show as a fundraiser for We Are Aware. We have also been kindly supported by a number of donations from the wider community. As well as our more therapeutic sessions, we have maintained a program of social events for those we support including a summer day trip to Sidmouth and Christmas Social, as well as events in nature including a session with At Play in the Woods and Goblin Combe Adventures. We have maintained our online presence through our website as well as Instagram and Facebook pages to raise our profile locally as well as our larger wellbeing We Are Aware page that has over 280k followers worldwide. In March Steve Philip, social influencer and lead of the Jordan Legacy put out a post on Linkedin about our TalkingPoint semicolon chat benches which led to ongoing conversations in the UK and abroad about possible future benches. 2024 saw a 4th bench installed in Portishead and a 5th in Bristol Narrow Quay facilitated by Hope Against Suicide (these follow the original Clevedon bench, Nailsea and Rlpple Suicide Prevention’s in Portsmouth inspired by the North Somerset benches). We have several more ideas and initiatives we hope to develop over the coming year.