Closed Cultures can occur in all sorts of settings - mental health hospitals, other hospitals, and social care services like care homes or supported living. Closed cultures often happen where people cannot speak up for themselves and these environments can lead to abuse and human rights breaches. People in closed cultures might experience things like being locked in or out of spaces, not being able to see friends or family, physical harm, or people controlling their choices or money.

Over the past few months People's Voice Media with Ideas Alliance and Curators of Change, have been gathering lived experience stories of 'Closed Cultures'. People have shared with us stories about what they wanted to talk about in regards to their encounters with institutions and Closed Culture environments.

We are now in the process of looking at these stories and identifying the key learnings and insights from them. We would like to do this collaboratively with:

• people who have experienced Closed Cultures
• people who may be at risk of being in a Closed Culture
• family members, carers or friends who support people who have experienced a Closed Culture
• People who feel they work in a Closed Culture

In this sense-making workshop, we would like to share with you some extended extracts from these stories and together have a conversation about:

• What the key messages in the stories are
• How these experiences resonate (or not) with our own
• What is the key learning for tackling Closed Cultures that we can take from the stories

The results of this conversation will feed into wider reporting based on the stories that the CQC will be using to improve their inspection processes and inform the ways in which they can be part of the answer to eradicating Closed Cultures altogether.

Please join this workshop, and help us to explore the insights and learnings in the stories, and think about what changes can and need to be made in the future.

Please note: Some of the story extracts may be quite difficult to listen to. The team will keep the Zoom open after the session as a space of mutual support for anyone who wishes to stay and talk further.