Reducing mental health stigma across Europe
Theatrum Animi
Exploring the Stage Within
Mental health concerns everyone. Stigma is what keeps it private. Nine cultural and mental health organisations in seven countries are working together to change that: on stage, in rehearsal rooms, and in the conversations that follow.
Inner worlds shape public lives.
Theatre and mental health practice, in the same room
Theatrum Animi is a European cooperation project co-funded by the Creative Europe programme. Between 2026 and 2028 we bring theatre-makers, mental health professionals, people with lived experience and audiences into shared work: performances, workshops, training and research.
We are not claiming that theatre treats anything. We are testing something more specific and more useful. Shared artistic practice changes how people are seen, how they see themselves, and what a community is willing to talk about.
Three strands of work
Make together
Co-created productions and workshops led by artists and practitioners alongside people with lived experience of mental health difficulty.
Learn together
A Community of Practice, training exchanges and webinars that move methods across nine organisations and seven countries.
Talk together
A public campaign that invites audiences to watch, take part, talk back, and, if they want to, take the stage.
What is happening now
Announcements, open calls and updates from across the partnership.
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Method lab in Modena opens the first exchange
Twenty practitioners from seven countries spent four days building a shared vocabulary for consent in rehearsal.
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Open call: artistic residencies 2027
Six residencies for artists working at the intersection of theatre and mental health practice.
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The Community of Practice is now open
No fee, no membership form. Bring a question and a piece of practice you are willing to share.
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Evaluation framework published
How we will measure what changes, and what we deliberately will not try to measure.
Come and see. Then stay and talk.
Reducing stigma is what happens when audiences and performers share the same room. Our campaign brings performances, open rehearsals and post-show conversations to venues across Europe, and every one of them is open to you.
Practice, written down
Essays, field notes and interviews from the people doing the work. Read what worked, what did not, and what we are still arguing about.
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Field notes
What a rehearsal room asks of you
On the difference between being observed and being seen, and why the second one takes eight weeks.
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Interview
“I stopped explaining myself”
An actor on what changed when the audience stopped being an audience.
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Research
Measuring what a room does
Building an evaluation framework that does not flatten the thing it is trying to describe.
Nine organisations, one shared question
Theatres, festivals, companies and mental health services from Italy, Spain, Ireland, Finland, Serbia, Sweden and the Czech Republic.
Stay with the project
Project news, open calls, webinar dates and event listings. Around one email a month, and you can leave whenever you like.