Streaming for Mental Health, Getting the Crew Back Together

The current coronavirus pandemic has been a struggle for many people, especially those who experience mental illness. As we approach our ninth month in lockdown, our supporters are finding new and inventive ways to connect with their friends and family, as well as raise vital funds to help us support those who most need us. Chris told us:

Many lifetimes ago, myself and a group of friends regularly DJ’d in and around Nottingham holding a monthly event called Doodle (we DJ’d and doodled on the walls of the club!). We always tried to outdo each other every month and get people dancing as early as possible, but the most important element of the event was us getting together. Talking about music and enjoying the camaraderie of being with friends and sharing the experience. Now we all live around the world, in Nottingham, Brighton, Malaysia and Australia, and don’t get to see each other as often as we would like.

When the first Coronavirus lockdown started this year, we realised that globally we were all experiencing the same thing; being stopped from meeting with our friends and family. This was having a detrimental effect on our wellbeing. So, we started to get together online and share our experiences of the current situation. We would talk about how we might be able to DJ again if we used the tech that we had discovered during lockdown to stream our DJ sets to each other. It wasn’t easy at first, there’s lots of kit to understand and techy things to work out. But together we slowly started to get ourselves in a place where we were able to share that experience of DJing again, which was so great for our mental health and we could support those who were finding this period tough too.

Since lockdown started, Rethink Mental Illness has seen over 2.3 million people visit their site for advice on coping with anxiety and depression and we thought that we could help raise fund while bring together our friends and family online.

We all wanted to raise awareness of mental health and people living with mental illness during what has been a difficult year, so we decided to stream a DJ showdown over 10 hours with six DJ’s back to back showing off our skills. We wanted to raise money too, for a charity that was doing so much for people living with mental illness, so we chose Rethink Mental Illness. Of course we plan to have fun while we’re doing it too, Lockdown 2.0 has been tough for many but we hope to bring a bit of cheer back with some party bangers on the 28th November. Interested in getting involved with the fundraiser? Find out more via Facebook. Or take a look at the event page on Mixcloud.

If you’d like to donate, take a look at Doodle’s Just Giving page.