Open Minds was founded in 1999 to provide activities for individuals with a learning disability who live in Nottingham. Our aim as a charity is to provide a social network for our members so they can make friends and have a safe space to talk about their worries or concerns. More importantly however, we like to have fun! We pride ourselves on putting on a diverse programme of activities for our members. Open Minds is a small organisation, we rely on a close-knit team of volunteers, staff and trustees to help with the day to day running of things. Our programme of activities includes our Saturday meetings, mates and munchies, talk chat and chill, group trips, workshops, 1-2-1’s etc. We do all our activities out in the community and take our members to many locations in central Nottingham.

During the covid 19 pandemic we had to put our face-to-face activities on hold. Our charity continued to thrive online as we were faced with brand new challenges. The purpose of Open Minds to provide activities and socialisation become even more important, with Zoom being a tool to allow the continuance of our activities. We developed our services to have an emphasis on mental health, to combat the isolation our members were going through. The introduction of our What’s app group ‘What’s up?’ was a part of this, allowing our members to keep in touch and share photos of their outings. At present our what’s app group is still thriving, our services remain blended between in person and online allowing us to reach even more people pre pandemic.