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Image Source: Pixels Phew. I’m not alone, it seems, in my enthusiasm for poetry’s healing power. No less an organisation than UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) also believes in banging the drum for verse: March 21st is World Poetry Day, established by UNESCO. It was back in 1999, it turns out, that UNESCO set up World Poetry Day during its 30th General Conference in Paris in 1999. Its aim was to support “linguistic diversity through

Photo by MLucan on Wikipedia, CC SA-BY 3.0) I am an Italian writer and contributor to Inspire the Mind , and I was born in a country known for the wrong type of political avant-garde. We had the first fascist party in Europe and managed to switch sides in both world wars. The social reform movements that started in the 60s descended into violence in the 70s, taking the country on the brink of civil war. Twenty years later, Berlusconi invented the modern populist political sty

There are two types of creatives in this world; those who are hounded day and night by ideas forcing their way into the mind with jagged teeth and sharpened claws refusing to be ignored, and those who sit before an empty notebook eager to write, to paint, to compose, but don’t have any inspiration. There is torture in both, but as someone who has been plagued every second of her life by uninvited muses and ideas that she will never live long enough to utilise, believe me when

A prospective interdisciplinary curriculum integrating arts, health, and humanities at King’s College London A group of academics at...

How do you become a success in the arts without losing your mind? That’s a question I’ve been asking myself for decades. Unlike other industries where hard work and talent equate to more money and longevity, art of any kind is not a meritocracy. Photo by No Revisions on Unsplash In his book Outliers: The Story of Success, Malcolm Gladwell stated that you can be an expert in anything if you practice for 10,000 hours — but the truth is creativity takes more than just time, it t

Odd as it might sound, often the most comforting poetry is the darkest. I know this from personal experience, as a mental health advocate who has been running Healing Words workshops in prisons and for mental health charities for five years now. I set up the workshops as I myself had found poetry helpful during two severe depressive episodes when I was in my thirties. During the workshops, I explain and share poems which help us to understand and allow our feelings, whether d

Can poetry help our mental health? Image source: Freepik In my last piece, I spoke about my personal experiences with poetry, and the life-changing impact it has had on me, so much so that I’ve written a new book on the links between verse and our emotional wellbeing. However, now I am here to share the evidence that attests to poetry’s power to heal our minds. Author's own image I set about to find what research existed, and came across a number of studies which I divided in

Don’t worry, there are no spoilers. I haven’t stepped into a theatre since December 2019. I decided to change that by having a solo...

My experiences in the mental health service, and my experiences as an artist, have led me to develop new ways to engage people in...

I’m an English instructor, so of course I’ve had the opportunity to teach horror writer Shirley Jackson’s legendary short story “The...

Hosted by mental health researchers at King’s College London We were on the way out of the final UK lockdown when a group of young female...

The Inner Journey for an Outer World It came from the east. A virus that changed the world. The mental health, especially of Gen Z and...

Virtual reality (VR) has been finding more exciting applications for healthcare: VR tools help ease chronic pain, change body...

An Interdisciplinary Curriculum Development Workshop in Arts, Health and Humanities at King’s College London Today, our Inspire the Mind...

A blog written by Amina, Subeyda and Maryam (Assistant Editors of InSPIre the Mind) — — — Ramadan is a special time for Muslims all...

As a Ukrainian researcher doing a rotation at the SPI lab, the home of Inspire the Mind, I can’t help but wonder what the impact of war...

On the 24th of February 2022, my life was split into “before” and “after”. Guess which country I am from? Ukraine. Living through the war...

Trigger Warning: The following blog discusses graphic content shown in various horror films which some readers may find distressing. — —...

Sometimes I write on my research. Sometimes on topics I am politically passionate about. Sometimes on things that happen to me. And sometimes a scene from a tv series affects me so much that writing about it is the only way for me to understand why. Welcome to my attempt to emotionally and cinematographically dissect the famous scene “Max’s favourite song/Running Up That Hill” in #StrangerThings4, Chapter 4. Spoiler alert: if you have not seen this chapter, or indeed the seri

Hygge (pronounced “hoo-gah”) is a concept that originated in Danish culture that focuses on living with a sense of comfort, coziness, and...

The Rise of Nostalgic Music During COVID-19: How it helped us cope Music has a constant presence in our lives. Whether it was playing in...

Cars & Cameras: How the Car Community Benefits our Mental Health What if I told you Herbie Car was real? That cars have feelings and a...

Editor’s Note: The language used in the following piece is in reference to the time period in which the events discussed take place. In...

How can architecture support our mental health? Part 2 Last week, we began with an overview of how architecture can influence our mental...