Campaigns on the move

In the run up to the General Election, the Rethink Campaigns team will be holding events right across England. To give people affected by mental illness the chance to quiz local Parliamentary candidates about mental health. Find out more about our  General Election events.

Rethink's Basingstoke Carers Group had a successful Coffee Morning on Saturday February 6th with 35 members and supporters attending. Find out what happened when Maria Miller MP for Basingstoke, called in to meet the group and to give a talk.

The first of our art workshops in the Rethink Parliament programme took place in November. The Rethink Companions Befriending service in Ware hosted the two day event and had a great time.

Read a report from Alison Williams about the November 2009 art workshop and see the photos of the artwork produced.

The Rethink Politics Champions programme is drawing to a close. However we have two final Tours of Parliament planned, the first of which happened on November 9th 2009.

A group from Birmingham and a group from Exeter joined to take part in one of the most interesting tours yet.

Read more about Rethink's November 2009 Tour of Parliament - what we learned and find out which celebrity we literally bumped into!

Rethink service users and carers had the chance to meet Speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow MP at Westminster. The event was the launch of our exciting arts project 'Finding Your Voice', working with Parliamentary Outreach to engage people affected by mental illness with the work and relevance of Parliament.

Find out more about Rethink art workshops

Rethink activists dressed up in Cinderella costumes and collected politician's pledges of support in a pumpkin!

Find out more about exactly how successful we were at the three political conferences.

A group of Rethink service users met their MPs at Westminster for a series of meetings on July 15th as part of our 10 minute lobby.

Read more about who was there and what was agreed by the MPs.

Rethink were asked by the Department of Health to work in partnership with Mind to produce four consultation events. We ran these from June 12th-22nd 2009 with participants from around the country.

At these listening events, service users and carers discussed their experiences and produced recommendations for the Department of Health to use in their design of the new mental health vision 'New Horizons'.

Read more about the events and find out what will happen next.

Find out what happened on May 11th when a group of Rethink service users and carers met with a group of MPs. The purpose of the event was to make Parliament more representative of the population of the country. Read more here.

Another group of Rethink Politics Champions visited Parliament in April on a tour followed by a talk with MP Charlotte Atkins.

Read what two of the participants thought of the day.

Rethink Politics Champions work hard to push mental health issues up the political agenda. In return, MPs are taking time out to give these inspiring carers and service users Tours around Parliament.

Read more about their visit to the heart of UK politics.

There have been so many exciting activities over the past few weeks that we can't show them all here. Read about more on our archive page.