This post is written by the Courage Project's PGR Mental Health Coordinator, Bryony Porter.
In early August, Maria and I wrote a blog about the Courage Festival. As Maria described it, we hoped the day would be a festival...
"The word festival brings to mind positive connotations, right? This is the idea, this is the aim, this is the goal of Courage Festival; to not only celebrate our PGR experiences, voice our stories, mingle with our peers throughout the country and fill each other’s shoes, but to also change the rhetoric about doctoral studies. It should NOT be a nightmare, it should NOT be a war, it should NOT be a pain, and it should NOT break you. It ought to be a dream coming true, it ought to be a long fight to win, it ought to be the gain, and at the end of the day, it ought to be you unbroken."
Did we manage to achieve what we set out to do? Oh I think so. Over 75 PGRs and Staff working at UEA and universities across the UK joined us in a wonderfully unique event. The Courage Festival created a safe space for individuals to have open, honest and courageous conversations, learn a new skill, explore challenges of implementing interventions, understand our response to perceived failure and appreciate why you and the people around you every day are truly remarkable.
There were so many great moments throughout the day but a couple personal highlights for me were (1) Laura Haag’s ‘I am Remarkable’ session, (2) a powerful and emotive session called ‘Giving Voice to PGRs’ organised by Natasha Senior and (3) seeing people carry their potted seedlings of mint and rosemary home after visiting the PhDiggers stall.
The ‘Giving Voice to PGRs’ session, involved the presentation of anonymous monologues from PGRs, created as a result of a series of interviews Natasha undertook with UEA PGRs during her placement with Courage. We are going to be releasing each of the four monologues in a blog series over the rest of the semester.
Across the chairs set up in the Hive was the Lakeside View Blog Zine, created by Tarnia and showcasing some of the contributions to the blog over the past year (it is super beautiful and you can see copies of it in Scholars bar if you want to check it out).
Although, as ever, nothing is smooth sailing. When the idea of the Courage Festival was born, in one of our monthly strand leads meetings in the Spring, I took it upon myself to lead on the event, as the ideas naturally fell largely under the strands of work that I lead on. A great idea, I thought. A great idea until I finished work that day and had that sudden feeling of impending and overwhelming fear, stress and anxiousness. I’d taken on too much.
I’d agreed to lead on this event at the same time as doing the final reviews and edits to my thesis, which I was due to submit at the end of June, alongside my usual day-to-day work, that I was squeezing into the three days a week I was working at the time. What did I learn? That it is okay not to be okay, it is okay to say you’ve taken on too much. The sooner that you can be honest about this, the more opportunity there is to gather support and make adjustments. We postponed the Festival until September and gathered a committed and collaborative team of people to regularly meet to plan and implement the festival. In doing so, we did not leave anyone feeling overwhelmed or overworked, but left us feeling like we worked as team to create an event that we were proud of.
I would like to give my thanks to each and every one of the people who were involved in the development of ideas, planning, mind-mapping, organising, setting-up, taking-down, smiling, welcoming and committed people from the Courage Project team who made the festival a success. Particularly to each of the PGRs on our project team who have been doing placements with Courage who were involved in the planning and implementation of the day, including developing and leading sessions. A special thank you to Maria Tsimpiri who worked incredibly hard on the planning and organisation of the Festival during her Courage placement. Thank you to all the fantastic people who ran workshops, walks, runs, yoga, and bullet journaling and self-compassion and mindfulness sessions throughout the day. You made the day a success and a pleasure to work on.
#YouAreRemarkable