“You’re on mute!” – Manchester Mind through the Zoom Lens Ruth Rosselson, Resilience Co-ordinator Before Covid-19 turned our world upside-down, most of us were unaware of Zoom and had only basic experience of video calls and online conferences. But in February 2020, our face-to-face services had to stop. By March we were all working from home and looking at adapting services so they could be delivered digitally or by telephone. Trying to deliver a service through the screen is completely different to having someone in your physical space, and for many of us, there were pre-conceptions that this could not possibly work and was a poor substitute for face-to-face work. We were worried that we would be missing people who were digitally excluded – whether for financial reasons or because of the fear of technology, and we were right to be. However, with no other choices, we had to go ahead and there were some positives which we did not predict. In the first few months of the first lockdown I led some open access drop-in sessions. These were short experiential sessions including calming techniques or mindful meditations, staff sessions, and drop-ins for mindfulness graduates. I was pleased to find a sense of community building between regular attendees, and that people were often very open even to a bunch of strangers in rooms across the city.
Annual Review 2020-21
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