ON OUR RADAR

Bloom Festival 2024

Mental health and wellbeing event returns with a day of workshops, talks, poetry and performances.

Leigh Curtis

Exeter Phoenix is hosting a free one-day event promoting mental health and wellbeing on Sunday 12 May.

Bloom Festival aims to celebrate mental wellbeing and raise awareness of mental health issues with a programme of workshops, talks, films, poetry and performances.

Workshops offer opportunities to learn to play the ukelele with Dickon Fell, use bargello needlepoint technique to create a bookmark with Exeter Girl or join a conversation about anxiety facilitated by Bridge Collective.

The programme also includes an interactive talk with local writer Louisa Adjoa Parker about resilience and a session with Isobel and Phil from Exeter theatre company Four of Swords exloring how to build a support network.

There will also be a Spork! open mic plus performances by Isobel Jeffrey, also from Four of Swords, and cabaret from Rite to Freedom and MoMENtum.

Alongside movement, meditation, singing and “Yopo” sessions there will be a family rave and a programme of short films.

Bloom Festival Sunday 12 May 2024 Exeter Phoenix

Launched in May 2022, Bloom Festival is an annual mental health awareness event timed to mark Mental Health Awareness Week, a national campaign initiated in 2001 by charity Mental Health Foundation.

It is supported this year by Iron Mill College and the Co-op Local Community Fund.

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Bloom Festival 2024 is on Sunday 12 May at Exeter Phoenix.

Visit the Bloom Festival programme webpage on the Exeter Phoenix website for more information and to book session places.

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