The Pilot Life Rooms at the Playhouse

The Pilot Life Rooms is a partnership between the Playhouse and Mersey Care, the largest mental health trust in the North West.

In January 2020 a pilot initiative began enabling the Playhouse to be a dual-purpose building. In the daytime it operated a community/social model in response to mental health need, and in the evening it operated as a working theatre. 

The model is a national exemplar. Service-users are referred from mental health services or self-refer. They enjoy the café and participate in sessions/courses (50% are creative wellbeing sessions e.g. Drama for Confidence and Wellbeing and 50% are activities to support mental health e.g. Understanding Psychosis). 

Sessions were led through a collaboration between Creative professionals & Mersey Care’s Social Inclusion & Participation Team.

About The Pilot Life Rooms

In January and February 2020, 1287 people visited The Pilot Life Rooms. During the first 2.5 months (2 days a week) there were 895 general enquiries, 612 box office enquiries and up to 144 new The Life Rooms members alongside existing service users.

Mersey Care reported 35 engagements with social prescribing during the pilot; these resulted in 71 referrals to services, such as employment, volunteering, external service providers and learning at The Pilot Life Rooms.

Evaluation of the Pilot

- The offer at The Pilot Life Rooms was valued by members, volunteers and staff, and anecdotal and course feedback evidence suggests that Members experienced growths in confidence and feelings of self-worth alongside developing relationships and mutual support with others.  

- Collaboration between the core partners was a strength of the pilot period, the skills that each organisation brought to the partnership were identified as a strength of the ways in which The Pilot Life Rooms were delivered.

- The city centre location was a success.  It has brought people into the city centre that had previously felt excluded from it, and who have then gone on to spend more time there outside of their engagement with The Pilot Life Rooms.

Feedback from The Pilot Life Rooms service users

 

 

The COVID-19 pandemic halted the delivery of The Pilot Life Rooms in a physical space in March 2020. It did, however, create an opportunity to develop online provision and The Pilot Life Rooms continued to meet with members online.