Please help us raise the money to take the 30th anniversary conference of Asylum magazine for democratic psychiatry out into the community and promote the ideas which are represented in it into people's lives. Asylum magazine has been running for 30 years now and year after year giving voice to issues of mental health and people who suffer various anxieties and labels, as well as those who work in the field who care about how madness is understood.
For decades Asylum has been an important intellectual platform which has been opening up spaces where issues of mental health can be discussed freely and critically. Inspired by the psychiatric survivors movements campaigning for alternatives to the psychiatric mainstream, it has championed a search for different meanings and understandings of madness and distress which are needed.
Many well known commentators on psychology and psychiatry have been involved by writing and producing the magazine over the years, but also - what makes this publication unique is that everyone has the opportunity to be involved by publishing their thoughts and comments. Psychiatric service users and survivors have been intimately involved from the beginning as people who have something important to say and share.
On the 28th of June hundreds of deligates from all over the world come together at the 30th anniversary conference held in the University of Manchester. This crowdfunder page has been set up to extend the conference out from the university into a public community space where everyone can take part in the anniversary celebration for free.
An evening of entertainment and information is planned with musicians, bands, talks and food. We need money to put this event on and to cover printing costs so that everyone can get an informative book of the conference content to spread awareness of the research, ideas and movements which have made it up.
Alongside this we are raising money for a public exhibition to be carried on in Manchester after the conference moving around public spaces and promoting Asylum magazine along with all that was brought together in the conference. With thirty art easels it will migrate from place to place eventually traveling north to Edinburgh to feature in the Scottish Mental Health Arts and Film Festival during October 2017.
To promote the work, ideas, concepts and debates which go on in the conference we want to film and audio record it so that everyone can get a chance to tune into it online. Accompanying this an unedited book of the whole endeavour will be made featuring all the contributions to the conference from academics, practitioners, service users and survivors, and of course from the people who helped make this all possible - those who donated to this crowdfunding campaign.
The more money we raise the more we can do to take all that Asylum magazine represents out to communities and across the world with technology. Please help make this a reality and give generously; it has all been brought together on voluntary basis