The World has changed a lot since 2016 when P&P was established. Mental Health is something that is now much more widely spoken about than it ever was then and that’s an absolutely incredible thing.
The purpose of P&P was to raise awareness, to give people a voice, in an industry that didn’t do enough to help people with stress, anxiety, work pressures and other issues that affect all of us.
There is still a lot that can be done – especially in the creative sector – to bring the topic of mental health into more discussions and how we can all help our friends, staff and co-workers when they need it the most but one thing that is clear now, that wasn’t in 2016, is that awareness around mental health is as good now as it’s ever been.
In 2016 it felt like there was very little out there about the subject, and that’s why P&P was established. But now there are so many news articles and blogs that do it so much better than we ever could; books and videos that help people with their issues but also educate people on how they can help others too and that’s only going to grow.
At this time, it’s difficult to know where P&P sits amongst all of this new and incredible awareness. Our content has suffered, including our blog and social which has effectively dried up, as the pressures to deliver unique stories told by our brave story tellers takes a lot of time, attention and drive to get right and sadly, it’s something we haven’t been able to commit more resource to.
The team are all busy people and as a collective decision, 3 of the 4 founders have decided to part ways with P&P – not because the project isn’t important to them – far from it, but because the project can’t be given the time they wanted to give to it.
So what happens now? Well, I (Col), I have decided to keep the project going, at least for now. I’m unsure what keeping it going means right now, and I’m unsure how to keep the project relevant. I know that I still want to bring a voice to those who want to speak up but I’m not sure how that looks right now.
Hopefully I’ll have more ideas to share with you all soon on what that might look like and of course, any and all suggestions on how you’d like to see P&P continue would be appreciated – please leave them in the comments below.
To all of the bloggers, podcasters and media outlets that do more to raise awareness of Mental Health – I applaud you. I thank everyone who’s ever followed us, who’s ever contributed to the magazine, who’s ever bought the magazine to help us to continue to run the website, to those who share others stories and finally to the people who give up their own personal experiences to raise awareness.
Here’s to all of you, stay tuned for what’s next for P&P.