On Tuesday 7th July, myself, Sally Barlow, and SUGAR members Michael and Mandy all met up at Kings Cross Station where we walked to the National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO) to meet up again with our friends from MindTech.  Unfortunately our friend and fellow SUGAR member, Jay who  arranged the original meet between ourselves and MindTech up in Nottingham, could not attend on this occasion. 

MindTech are currently working with some engineering and science researchers at the University of Manchester (a group called NewMind) to develop a ‘roadmap’ for the science research needed to meet the future aspirations of how technology can support people with mental health problems.As part of this process, they were co-hosting a workshop to focus on what service users and carers want from technology in order feed this into the road map. It was an invitation only event, attended by some of the large mental health charities as well as a number of lived experience advisors. 

 

                                   The day was a big success and there were some very interesting new innovations that could change the daily lives of people living with mental illness. There were lots of people there from different organisations and charities that were interested in how SUGAR ran as a group, so we managed to do some good networking while we were there, spreading the word of SUGAR! Throughout the day Michael, our very talented artist, was drawing and you can see these illustrations throughout this thread. Finally a big thank you to Lucy Simons of MindTech for inviting us and to Dan Morley and Professor Chris Taylor of Manchester University for hosting such an enjoyable workshop.