Story

Heads Above The Waves is a not-for-profit Community Interest Company that exists to raise awareness about self-harm, and encourage creative alternative coping mechanisms. Our aim is to make everyone feel able to talk honestly and openly about mental health, know where to find help when they need it, and find what works for them to deal with the bad days. We work with up and coming artists and designers to create merchandise that has a message behind the design, with the aim of using our shirts as a starting point for a conversation about mental health. We run and attend events all across the UK to sell our merch, start conversations and distribute literature about support that's available and how to support someone struggling with self-harm. Our website signposts people to support, as well as sharing people's stories and experiences of how they overcame self-harm. From these stories and experiences, we've built a database of different things to try to help overcome self-harm - because we understand that there isn't a "one size fits all" approach to stopping. We also regularly post inspirational and informative blog posts on our site, and across our social media. And over the last year, we've started introducing workshops into schools and youth groups - it's one thing to post online about creative coping mechanisms, but the next step is actually letting young people try it out for themselves. So far the results have been incredibly promising, with most of the people we work with coming away feeling better equipped for dealing with bad days, or even stopping self-harming behaviours altogether. We want to speak to young people on their level, while being helpful and informative. We've had a fair few supporters of our work asking if they can fundraise for us, and so we're now set up with Givey so that our supporters can fundraise for us - which helps us create literature, buy supplies for workshops, and keep on doing all the work we're doing.