Divergence: A Festival of Madness 2019

Divergence: A Festival of Madness 2019

Celebrating the richness of Mad, Neurodivergent and Divergent Lives

Divergence: A Festival of Madness is a week-long celebration in Christchurch from 30 March – 6 April 2019 which will include a variety of different community events, seminars, shows and awareness raising opportunity designed to re-frame how we view mental distress/ madness/ unique worldviews.

The project is being led by a group of people who work in the mental health and addictions sector in Christchurch as managers, peer support workers and educators. We seek to create a space where we can celebrate seeing the world through different lenses rather than the “normal” or neurotypical way. This is an opportunity to create a space which is relational and experiential as opposed to medical or diagnostic.

We have opted to do this project as volunteers outside of our organisational roles so that it is not seen as being part of a "mental health service". We aim to provide spaces in our community for people with diverse life experiences so we can connect, celebrate, showcase and share the richness of our lives, to one another and the wider community. We want the general public to have an opportunity to be amongst diversity and have an opportunity to understand what divergent people bring to the world.

The Divergence initiative is the brain child of Hannah Komatsu who is a trained social worker and a peer educator in the local mental health sector. She has had her own lived experience of divergence and wants to develop this initiative to raise awareness of the various experiences people have and that diversity should be better understood and celebrated. Hannah is supported by a team of enthusiastic volunteers with experience of event management, project coordination and awareness raising.

The week of events will include our mad wisdom cafe, mad yarning, community listening posts, a mad poetry evening, comedy night, a black dog walk in Hagley Park, a cabaret show and a more formal one day seminar.

Christchurch is a city that has and continues to undergo huge stress. We believe that nurturing human connection and enabling meaningful conversations that are based around validation rather than problem solving is a vital part of our cities healing process. We believe that through community initiatives and projects like this sitting outside of services we can increase social connectedness, reduce isolation and support communities to thrive.

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