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 is 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 our way to fight against 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. Living e-Motions brings together various fields of expertise to establish an innovative training course on emotional education through visual story-living. 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 story-living learners can 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 now 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 do not only tell our stories but make others feel our stories 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 carried out the project. We worked to develop this online platform containing all the learning materials related to the project. In addition to the training curriculum, here you can find the TELL IT OUT! portfolio, a digital publication about the benefits of knowing, recognizing, analyzing and sharing emotions related to recovery experiences in mental health. Moreover, some informative events were organized to share the learning from the project and the experiences of the participants in the pilot courses.