As Mental Health Awareness Week (11th to 17th May) puts the spotlight on action, Catherine Grinyer makes the case for embedding mental health thinking into how we plan, design, and run events.
The conversation around mental health at events has come a long way. But for Founder and Director Catherine Grinyer, who set up Attendable Events to champion accessible and inclusive event design, progress has been uneven: “We’re moving in the right direction,” she says. “But it’s not yet standard practice. It should be.”
Catherine’s starting point is always the delegate experience – mapped in detail before a venue is even booked: “We think about the pressure points – busy periods, volume levels, physical pinch points that could cause anxiety, and whether there’s enough space for people to move comfortably.” One of the most consistent problems she encounters is published venue capacity: “A room listed for 300 people quite obviously can’t hold 300 people, not comfortably. Tick-box accessibility is the same issue in a different form. Interrogate the detail; don’t just trust the listing.”
Dedicated quiet spaces are now appearing at more events, with organisations such as EventWell offering pop-up solutions deployable at conferences, awards, and exhibitions. However, as Catherine points out: “A quiet space is only as good as how it’s managed. It needs to be staffed throughout, with a clear code of conduct. Without that, it gets used for phone calls and emails, and the people who genuinely need it lose access. If budget allows, set a separate co-working space for that and protect the quiet area.”
Staff training is equally important. Catherine briefs every event team in advance on how to approach delegates inclusively, how to spot signs of stress or anxiety, and how to respond: “These are relatively simple things. But they require treating mental health as a core part of the event build, not an afterthought.”
Treat mental health as a core part of the event build, not an afterthought.
Physical design matters more than the industry typically acknowledges. Clutter-free layouts, generous spacing, and adjustable lighting all contribute to a calmer environment. Catherine points to less obvious factors too – smell among them: “Strong perfumes, aftershaves, and heavily scented food can be genuinely triggering. We’ve seen guidance issued on it, and it’s worth taking seriously.” She cites a tour of Cisco’s London offices, which feature a bespoke ambient scent specifically tested to be calming: “That’s relatively easy to replicate at an event. It’s just thinking about the sensory experience holistically.” Access to daylight and acoustic management complete the picture.
The question of who bears responsibility – planner or venue – comes up regularly. Catherine’s answer: both, in genuine partnership. She recommends having the conversation early and has successfully negotiated additional space at reduced rates by framing a quiet room as part of the event’s accessibility commitment: “It’s often within the gift of the venue. It just takes someone to ask.”
With the theme of this year’s Mental Health Awareness Week being ‘Action’, Catherine’s recommendations are practical and mostly low-cost – appoint a trained mental health first aider, improve pre-event communications with orientation videos, venue maps, and buddy systems for networking, plan genuine breaks rather than five-minute comfort stops, and publish a code of conduct naming a designated support person. And don’t forget to look inward: “Event crews are under enormous pressure. Make sure your own team has somewhere to go, time to eat, and someone to talk to. Our mental health matters too.”
For Catherine, the broader point is simple: “We’re all falling over ourselves to prove our events are sustainable. We should be doing the same on accessibility and mental health. They’re not a separate conversation – they’re one and the same.”