The Living e-Motions project is the first step in a new challenge – give emotions the place they deserve and give voice to people who really need to be heard.
The Living e-Motions programme will be designed to meet both challenges. On one hand, we want people living with mental health issues to explore their inner worlds, talk about their emotions, recognise their complexities and learn to live with and manage them. On the other hand, we want society to listen to people’s voices, open their mind and understand that we can all experience mental health issues. This is what will help to finally break down the stigma that prevents people with mental health challenges fully integrating in society.
To do this we need an effective tool; a vehicle to take us through this journey. The project will bring together various fields of expertise to establish an innovative training course on emotional education through visual storyliving. We all share stories; telling people about ourselves and how we feel but sometimes we need some help to explore feelings and emotions which are complex and difficult to express.
Through visual storyliving learners will share their reflections on their own emotions and recovery experiences on camera; opening up their story to themselves and the rest of the world. They are the protagonist of their own story.
Putting feelings into words has therapeutic effects. Storytelling is a powerful recovery tool, particularly for people living with mental health challenges. Living e-Motions goes a step further: we are not just going to tell our stories but make others feel our story through short videos and live events where people living with mental health challenges open up about their feelings and recovery story from a positive perspective.
An international team comprised of four organisations from Spain, Estonia, Slovenia and Scotland UK is carrying out the project. We are working to develop an online platform containing all the learning materials related to the project and the Tell It Out! portfolio which will be a digital publication about the benefits of knowing, recognizing, analyzing and sharing emotions related to recovery experiences in mental health. In addition, we will be organizing events to share the learning from the project and the experiences of the learners.