Jean's Bothy podcast

Jean's Bothy is a mental health & wellbeing hub based in Helensburgh open to members who are over 16, living in Helensburgh & Lomond. It's free to join and we welcome anyone who would like to improve their mental health & wellbeing. A range of activities, groups and opportunities are open to members including art, sewing, woodcraft, fitness, writing, counselling, gardening, mindfulness and one-off taster sessions such as sound baths; reiki; trips to exhibitions, places of interest and a monthly book club, film club and even karaoke! Last October we launched our own podcast as part of Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival. We were able to record an initial 6 episodes and have since recorded another 6 episodes this year. They all fit with the theme Comfort & Disturb and include topics such as nature, OCD, ME, photography, Mums and many more. One of our members spoke about his experience of restraint due to his mental health. A number of universities are now interested in using this episode to inform and help teach their students. We would love to continue our podcast for the next year and require funding to record and edit these to ensure we continue to provide interesting and accessible content to our members and the public. This podcast aims to education and raise awareness of living with mental health challenges, as well as having a positive impact on the member involved and empowering them to have their voice heard. Every time an episode is launched we also have a screening within Jean's Bothy to allow members to watch in company and have a discussion relevant to the topic it covers. The initial series resulted in some fascinating discussions and we are really keen to continue this moving forward. With a budget to cover the year ahead we could record another 40 episodes.

Who Benefits

Our members would be the immediate beneficiaries as they would have the opportunity to get involved in sharing their story. This would give them a chance to create an episode on an area of their life that relates to their mental health & wellbeing. We would support them within Jean's Bothy to create this. Our host Graham Morgan will also meet with each member to discuss their episode before it is recorded. Paul Murdoch has recorded and edited the previous episodes and we would be keen to have him involved going forward too. The wider membership benefits as they have the opportunity to attend our shared screening of each episode. the wider community benefits as they will have access to each episode through our youtube channel and also spotify and anywhere else you can get your podcast from. Universities and Colleges are already benefiting from current episodes and we would want to ensure they are kept up to date with what topics we are discussing to allow them to benefit further.