What we do

We create spaces for open and courageous conversations about self-harm. We run workshops, peer-led spaces, and develop research and resources.

  • Learning

    People often struggle to feel confident supporting those who self-harm. Despite our best intentions we don’t always know how to respond in ways which are caring and careful. We support people to respond to self-harm with more compassion, patience, and confidence.

  • Peer-led spaces

    Make Space facilitates opportunities for people with experience of self-harm to come together and share their feelings, experiences, and histories. Often our spaces are grouped around a theme or particular activity.

  • Research and Resources

    We create resources and conduct research promoting more generous and courageous responses to self-harm. Our work is inspired by survivor-led research and Mad Studies.

  • “Make Space are doing exemplary work in terms of framing events in caring ways that prioritise the wellbeing, comfort and safety of participants…

    Overall, Make Space are doing genuinely exciting, innovative and life-changing work”

    [Panel discussion attendee]

  • “The sessions gave me an opportunity to reflect on some of the generalisations you learn as a medical student and doctor: Your role is to help fix or heal people, and self-harm represents ‘something wrong’.

    I hope to take this learning forward not only as a clinician but as someone contributing to better healthcare services in the future.”

    [Junior Doctor]

  • “Make Space doesn’t shy away from centering complex and broad lived experiences of self-harm beyond narrow definitions, contextualised within an understanding of the need for systems change”

    [Peer-led workshop attendee]

  • “It has been invaluable for me to hear, first hand, from people who have a history of self-harming, in a context where they are safe and well, and where I don’t have direct responsibility for them.”

    [Healthcare worker]

  • “Through thoughtful facilitation [Make Space] created an incredibly affirming space for people like me who are queer and who have experience of self-harm, to share open and honest reflections on their experiences and intersecting marginalisations. It was a space of solidarity and safety unlike any I’ve been in before”

    [Attendee of a peer-led space for LGBTQ+ people]

  • “I appreciated that there was no attempt to give any simplistic ‘this is what to do’ answers”

    [Attendee of a peer-led space]