London Festival of Architecture 2023

Pop by to visit Makower Architects’ studio for one or more of our three open round table discussions that aim to push forward the ongoing dialogue and innovative thinking about design for mental health. The events will centre around our latest collaborative initiative, Homestead, a vision for a network of therapeutic environments across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland which will provide a new kind of supported housing & psychiatric rehabilitation community which does not exist in the UK at present.

Homestead's long-term impact will be to fill a significant and costly gap in the current UK's mental health infrastructure - Almost 15 billion pounds is spent each year providing inpatient care for people experiencing serious mental illness in the UK. Sometimes this care does more harm than good, and is also highly stressful for staff too. We will work alongside NHS, social care and community partners, by providing an essential missing piece of the mental health infrastructure.

Homesteads will be a buffer between hospital and independent living, so that more people can stay well, stay out of hospital, creating new potential for individual and community wellbeing. Together we can explore our common ground and co-produce future solutions - putting compassionate, relational care, design excellence, community and nature at the heart of everything we do.

FREE ENTRY AND DRINKS PROVIDED

Co-hosted by Makower Architects, Compassionate Mental Health and Community of Communities. Knowledge Partner: Salus

Event 1: MENTAL ILLNESS & WELLNESS IN THE UK - IS THE SYSTEM WORKING? CAN DESIGN HELP?

The first of three radical roundtables will look to explore shifting narratives around mental health; and consider how sustainable design thinking and relationship-centred practice can help seed new models of care.

Mental illness is one of the biggest challenges of our age, and the health and we are seeing growing pressure on our social-care systems which struggle to cope with growing demand. Front-line staff face burnout, while patients fail to thrive with cycles of relapse, readmission - in and out of hospital. Often our mental health services can cause more harm than good.

Join our panel of experts for a deep dive into the complexities of mental illness and the mental health system. The panel will explore what is wrong with the current treatment approach and how we can reconsider our environments for care and cure.

Join is to co-create a bold new vision for our mental health services.

Speakers:

- CHAIR: Brigid Bowen (Compassionate Mental Health)

- Russell Razzaque – Consultant Psychiatrist, RCPsych Presidential Lead for Compassionate & Relational Care

- Eenasul Fateh - Professor Eenasul Fateh is a psychologist, social scientist, strategy consultant and artist-researcher; member of clinical team Trauma Service, Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust; Board Member, Tavistock Institute of Human Relations.

- Jacqui Dillon - A campaigner, writer, international speaker and trainer specialising in hearing voices, ‘psychosis’, dissociation, trauma, abuse, healing and recovery. National chair of the Hearing Voices Network in England.

Event 2: PAST & FUTURE APPROACHES TO MENTAL WELLNESS – THERAPUTIC ENVIRONMENTS, RELATIONAL PRACTICE & MORE

Having established a case for change with our first-round table, this second event will focus on beacons of past good practice and learn from experiences of running Therapeutic Communities. Our panel will take participants on a journey of what worked and didn’t work, and why they think relationship centred practice and symbiosis at a societal level is so important.

The discussion will look experientially at the spaces and places – indoors and outdoors - where illness, care and recovery take place in existing centres; looking at themes of safety, welcome, nature and community; and asking how the lives of those both being cared for and giving care can be impacted both positively and negatively by design and environment.

We’ll look back together and reflect on past ways of working, and recent changes, and scan the horizon for what’s coming next.

Speakers:

- Chair: Heather Macey + Adam Peavoy (Makower Architects)
- Peter Cockersell: Peter is CEO of Community Housing and Therapy
- Rex Haigh: Rex is an NHS Consultant Psychiatrist in Medical Psychotherapy. He has been fascinated by therapeutic communities since landing in one as a medical student; he has subsequently qualified in general practice, psychiatry, psychotherapy and group analysis. He is a past Chair of the Association of Therapeutic Communities, was Clinical Advisor for the National Personality Disorder Programme and a founding member of ‘Emergence’, the service user organisation for personality disorder. He set up the Royal College of Psychiatrists ‘Community of Communities’ quality network and now leads their “Enabling Environments” project.
- Nick Benefield: Senior policy advisor for Department of Health and Justice
- Rai Waddingham: Rai is a survivor, practitioner, writer, trainer, researcher, designer and activist with experience of creating and managing innovative peer support-based projects in a range of contexts (including youth, prison, forensic, inpatient and community). She has personal experience of hearing voices, psychosis, trauma, self-harm and hospitalisation and holds lived experience (personal and collective) as a compass that guides all she does. Currently studying a PhD in Survivor Knowledge at Nottingham Trent University, Rai is also Chair of the English National Hearing Voices Network and a Trustee of Intervoice (the charity supporting the international hearing voices movement). She is currently engaged in training people in Open Dialogue, an ethical community response to mental health and social crises, and embedding this within the NHS in the UK and in systems abroad.

Event 3: DESIGN & ENVIRONMENT FOR MENTAL WELLNESS

In this final round table of the LFA series, we’ll imagine a regenerative approach to mental health - what does it take to build relationships and environments that heal rather than harm - at national and local scale - both for neighbourhoods and individuals - for those providing care, for those being cared for, and for all members of communities.

What part does design of cities, buildings and landscapes play in supporting individual and collective wellbeing? How can nurturing overlaps and symbiosis between the well and unwell; professionals and volunteers, old and young; between enterprise and care, care homes and communities, society and the natural world, be part of pressing RESET for the UK’s mental health infrastructure?

Join our panel to explore how crafting spaces and places can help us be well and be ourselves. How the built environment can lead to powering a shift in values towards being more, rather than having more? And how living and healing in places which enrich rather than ignore environments can make us healthier and happier at a personal, local and national level?

Speakers:

Chair: Timothy Makower
Chris Shaw - Architect MAP (Medical Architecture)
John Whitehead - Director, Bottega Project
Dr Annja Neumann, Cross-disciplinary Artist-Researcher at the University of Cambridge, Senior Research Fellow of Magdalene College and Research Consultant in Creative Strategy & Policy
Rafael Marks - Principle - Perkins & Will