On 11th May 2019 OCDAction will be hosting their annual conference in London. This means it’s an opportunity for The Secret Illness community to get creative again! This year at the conference we will be staging live performances that explore what it is like to live with OCD and hosting a discussion around the impact and outcomes of sharing OCD stories through the creative arts.

If you would like to attend the conference tickets are now available.

Even if you can’t be in London on 11th May you can still get involved. We plan to devise some new performance pieces inspired by your work. Have you produced any creative writing, monologues or poetry about your OCD, or composed some music that represents your OCD in some way? We are looking for work to inspire and adapt to stage performances.

If you are able to be in London on 11th May and you are interested in performing any of your work to a live audience please also get in touch using the form below.

Why get involved?

We asked one of The Secret Illness contributors, Steph, how it has helped her on her personal journey of coping with OCD and this is what she told us:

“My involvement in The Secret Illness has given me a way to contribute to something that’s bigger than my individual experience, and I’m convinced that this has been a positive force in maintaining my OCD recovery.

Sharing my experience creatively lifted a lid on conversations about mental health with my friends and family – conversations that I believe simply would have never surfaced otherwise.

One of the best things about doing the podcast episode was that when Liz interviewed my partner and I, we didn’t know what the other had said, so when we listened to the recording for the first time and heard how we both talked the same particular OCD incident, we laughed – and that was amazing. To feel like we could laugh about it made us realize just how far away we were from that dark, dark time.

For me, participating participating in The Secret Illness really illustrates the power of co-creation. Co-creation allowed me the possibility to share my story and experiences in ways that weren’t available to me as individual – adding my story to a Wall as part of a community, having my poem brought to life by a voice actor, and creating a podcast under Liz’s creative direction and production talents. And I can’t talk about the podcast without mentioning Mitch who composed the original music that played such an intimate role in the telling of my story (we even met later on in person when he visited Toronto!).”