Published on: June 20, 2024
Last month saw the return of #maywemovetogether, the annual celebration of movement and its benefits to mental health by Compass Changing Lives.
Taking place during May, #maywemovetogether coincides with Mental Health Awareness Week (13-19th May), which in 2024 had the theme “Moving More For Our Mental Health”.
Changing Lives observed #maywemovetogether with a social media campaign that highlighted the various way colleagues used movement to support their mental health. There was a high level of participation in this campaign, with colleagues from all over the service sending in stories and even photos of the movement they choose to maintain their mental health. These included yoga, wild swimming, netball and walking in the Peak District and beyond.
The public was invited to join the Changing Lives team in moving for their mental health, with information on the benefits of movement suggestions of types they could do and interactive challenges on social media and the dedicated #maywemovetogether webpage.
Bringing the theme out of the computer and into the classroom were practitioners who led assemblies for primary and secondary pupils across Derbyshire for Mental Health Week. These assemblies explored what mental health is, why it’s important, and what can be done to support it. One key way to do that that was highlighted was movement, as one of the “5 Ways to Wellbeing”. These assemblies asked children what movement they could do for their mental health, and sometimes even got them moving during the assembly.
Some of these assemblies were developed by the young people themselves, like the Mental Health Captains at Wyndham Spencer Academy. You can read more about that here.
Carn Truscott, Marketing and Digital Communications Officer at Compass Changing Lives, had the following to say about #maywemovetogether:
“It was a joy to gather all these stories of movements from my colleagues, and share them with the world. It’s great that we’re all doing so much! #maywemovetogether is such fun and exciting project, and we’re looking forward to doing even more next year.”
Take a look at some of the stories from Changing Lives staff below:
Derby and Derbyshire Mental Health Support , may we move together , wellbeing