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Are you a Lived Experience Practitioner (LXP)? (Mad) Academic? Student? Clinician? Service User? Carer? Come and join us - Mad Studies is for everyone :-) This paper describes a community event organized in response to the appropriation and overreliance on the psychiatric patient “personal story” within mental health organizations. The sharing of experiences through stories by individuals who self-identify as having “lived experience” has been central to the history of organizing for change in and outside of the psychiatric system. However, in the last decade, personal stories have increasingly been used by the psychiatric system to bolster research, education, and fundraising interests. We explore how personal stories from consumer/survivors have been harnessed by mental health organizations to further their interests and in so doing have shifted these narrations from “agents of change” towards one of “disability tourism” or “patient porn.” We mark the ethical dilemmas of narrative cooptation and consumption, and query how stories of resistance can be reclaimed not as personal recovery narratives but rather as a tool for socio-political change. We are very blessed to have such an important paper written by some of the the regular and occasional faces at Mad Studies Birmingham - Lucy costa, Jijian Voronka & Jenna Reid, Becky McFarlane, Daville, Kathryn Church are some of the authors of this paper. One of the members or the Founding of Mad Studies has written a Commentary on the paper, alongside Sarah car, who as also occasionally popped in to see us. “Recovering our Stories”: A Small Act of Resistance - authored by Lucy costa, Jijian Voronka Voronka & Jenna Reid, Becky McFarlane, Daville, Kathryn Church. You can read it here: https://journals.library.brocku.ca/index.php/SSJ/article/view/1070 Please book your FREE place so that we have an idea of numbers to expect and can send you details of the papers being considered and Zoom details. Support other Mad projects: You can buy Asylum magazine here: https://asylummagazine.org/latest-issue/ 2023 Dates: 2 Mar 6 Apr 4 May 1 Jun 6 Jul 3 Aug 7 Sept 5 Oct 2 Nov 7 Dec

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