There’s a lot going on just now at Design in Mental Health Network....
So you’d be forgiven if you missed an announcement about an event, conference, exhibition or webinar… some of which we are sure you wouldn’t want to miss.
Here’s a look at what’s coming up at DiMHN over the next few months, from free webinars to major events, with plenty of opportunities to learn more and get involved.
April Webinar: Designing for Impact — Social Investment & Mental Health Spaces (Free to attend)
📅 Tuesday 21 April 2026 | 🕛 12:00–13:00 GMT | 💻 Online (Teams)
Our next free Lunch & Learn webinar explores an important question: how can social investment help us create and improve the buildings and places that support better neighbourhood mental health?
Community and neighbourhood mental health spaces are often underfunded, outdated or inflexible, yet they are central to delivering holistic, preventative and place-based care. This session will explore how social investment can unlock new funding approaches and support innovation in the environments where recovery, care and connection happen.
Delivered in partnership with Social Finance, the webinar will introduce key concepts, share real-world case studies, and open up opportunities for future collaboration.
You’ll gain insight into:
- Social Investment and Social Outcomes Partnerships
- Neighbourhood Transformation Funds in action
- The role of design in neighbourhood health
- Opportunities to get involved in future working sessions
We are delighted to be joined by a strong line-up of speakers, including Dr Sara Felix, Toby Eccles, Katy Nex, Ros Nerio, Hannah Arnett, Anisha Mayor, and our CEO Charlotte Burrows, each bringing valuable perspectives from social finance, research, healthcare and design.
This session is ideal for colleagues across NHS estates, ICS leadership, local authorities, VCSE organisations, design teams, funders, policymakers, researchers, and people with lived and living experience.
This webinar is free to attend.
May’s Ireland Webinar: The Case for Good Design - Creating Safe and Therapeutic Environments (Free to attend)
📅 Thursday 7 May 2026 | 🕛 12:00–13:30 GMT | 💻 Online (Teams)
Our second upcoming free Lunch & Learn webinar takes place on Thursday, 7 May 2026, 12:00–13:30 GMT, online via Teams, and will focus on Ireland.
The Case for Good Design: Creating Safe and Therapeutic Mental Health Environments asks a question that sits at the heart of DiMHN’s work: how can good design improve safety, support recovery, and shape better mental health care?
Design is never neutral. It influences how a space feels, how care is delivered, how distress is managed, and how recovery is supported. This webinar will bring together clinicians, estates professionals, architects, designers and people with lived experience to explore how evidence-informed, human-centred design can improve outcomes for service users, staff and services.
The conversation will cover everything from early engagement and co-production to retrofitting existing buildings and working within real-world constraints. It is designed to offer practical insight across disciplines and settings, with speakers reflecting on how environments can reduce risk, support staff wellbeing and enable more compassionate, effective care.
You’ll gain practical insight into:
- How design impacts safety, behaviour and recovery
- Improving environments within existing or constrained estates
- Balancing safety with therapeutic, human-centred spaces
- Applying evidence-informed design in practice
The session will feature contributions from Ciaran Cuddihy, Andrew Arnold, Brenda Garry and Shaista Zaidi, alongside facilitated discussion and live Q&A.
This webinar also builds momentum towards the Design for Healthcare Environments Ireland Conference & Exhibition in Dublin in September this year, making it a valuable opportunity for anyone interested in the future of mental health, intellectual disability and autism environments in Ireland.
If you work in capital and estates, clinicians, community services, healthcare design, or if you bring lived experience to shaping mental health spaces, this session is for you.
This webinar is free to attend.
May Webinar: Briefing Brilliance - Better Briefs for Better Mental Health Environments (Free to attend)
📅 Tuesday 12 May 2026 | 🕛 12:30–13:30 BST | 💻 Online (Teams)
A well-crafted brief is one of the most powerful tools in shaping mental health environments.
Done well, it aligns stakeholders, reduces costly redesign, and ensures that spaces genuinely support recovery, dignity and wellbeing. Done poorly, it can lead to missed opportunities, wasted resources, and environments that fall short of the needs they are meant to serve.
This Lunch & Learn webinar explores how to strengthen briefing in practice, with a focus on personas, stakeholder insight, and real-world application.
You’ll gain practical insight into:
- Creating clearer, more effective briefs for mental health environments
- Using personas to sharpen decision-making and improve outcomes
- Reducing risk, saving time and making better use of resources
- Real-world case studies demonstrating what works in practice
- Tools and techniques you can apply immediately
The session will feature:
- Karen Flatt, Architect and Mental Health Lead, Arcadis
- Alice Green, Architect and Associate Principal, Arcadis
- Con McGarry, Solution Lead | Digital x Healthcare, Arcadis
- Hosted by Charlotte Burrows, CEO, Design in Mental Health Network
This session is ideal for NHS estates and capital teams, ICS and local authority professionals, designers, co-production leads, and people with lived experience.
This webinar is free to attend.
Looking ahead:
This webinar also connects to a hands-on workshop at the Design in Mental Health Conference in June, where these ideas will be explored in more depth.
June 2026: Design in Mental Health Conference, Exhibition and Awards
📅 2–3 June 2026 | 📍 Coventry Building Society Arena, UK
On 2–3 June 2026, we come together once again for the Design in Mental Health Conference, Exhibition and Awards at the Coventry Building Society Arena.
This is the UK’s leading event dedicated to the mental health built environment, and it remains a key date in the calendar for everyone involved in designing, building, equipping, refurbishing, managing and using spaces for mental health care.
The event is curated to provide a forum for learning, knowledge-sharing, and staying up to date with best practices, emerging thinking, and innovative solutions. It brings together professionals from across funding, design, construction, management and clinical delivery, creating space for the meaningful conversations that help move the sector forward.
There is a lot to look forward to:
- The conference will feature a rich programme of keynotes, seminars, workshops and cross-sector discussions, carefully shaped by experts from the Design in Mental Health Network community. It is designed for clinicians, estates directors and managers, architects, product and service designers, academics, researchers, lived experience experts and many others working across the sector.
- The exhibition is a major opportunity to explore and compare products and services from leading suppliers, including many NHS-approved framework suppliers. Visitors will be able to discover innovations in furniture and fixtures, sensory solutions, safety systems, flooring, lighting, acoustics, modular construction, sustainable design, washrooms, and digital technologies, among other areas.
- The Design & Digital Solutions Theatre, located within the exhibition hall, will provide an additional programme of free-to-attend presentations for exhibition visitors, with a particular focus on safety, economy and digital innovation.
- The awards ceremony will once again celebrate outstanding achievement across the sector. Free to attend for all event visitors, it is always a brilliant moment to recognise excellence, share success and enjoy time with colleagues from across the community.
Whether you are looking to deepen your knowledge, discover new solutions, reconnect with peers, or bring practical ideas back to your organisation, this event is not to be missed.
September 2026: Design for Healthcare Environments Ireland (DHEI)
📅 29–30 September 2026 | 📍 RDS, Dublin
Looking further ahead, we are proud to be building towards something new and important.
On 29–30 September 2026, at the RDS, Dublin, DiMHN, in partnership with Step Exhibitions, will launch Design for Healthcare Environments Ireland (DHEI), a new conference and exhibition dedicated to improving mental health, intellectual disability and autism environments through thoughtful, co-produced and evidence-informed design.
This event has grown out of ongoing conversations and collaboration with colleagues across Ireland, alongside a clear appetite for a dedicated, locally relevant platform that reflects Irish priorities, providers and practice.
DHEI will offer practical solutions, innovative approaches, evidence-informed thinking, and co-produced strategies to help make care environments safer, more therapeutic, and more responsive to the people who use them.
It will bring together clinicians, designers, managers, estates and facilities professionals, suppliers, researchers, advocates and people with lived experience. Alongside the conference, the specialist exhibition will showcase products, services and innovations relevant to mental health, intellectual disability, autism-supportive and community-based healthcare environments.
There is also an open call for presentations, creating an opportunity for contributors to share real-world insight, research and innovation in this important area.
For those interested in shaping better healthcare environments in Ireland, this is a major date for the diary.
The event will focus on:
- Practical, real-world solutions
- Evidence-informed and co-produced design approaches
- Collaboration across disciplines
- Access to innovative products, services and expertise
With significant national investment in mental health infrastructure underway in Ireland, this event comes at an important moment — offering a platform to translate insight into meaningful change.
Missed our recent webinar? Catch up on Lighting in Mental Health
If you were not able to join us for our recent Lighting for Mental Health Lunch & Learn webinar in February, you can still catch up on the content and resources.
The session brought together around 200 professionals and practitioners to explore how lighting in mental health environments can support wellbeing, recovery and sustainability. It was an engaging and thought-provoking discussion, with insights spanning circadian health, practical retrofit solutions, emergency lighting, sustainability, climate responsibility and the everyday experience of care environments.
Speakers included Dr Shelley James, Lee McCarthy and Dr Fanny Burrows, each offering a different but connected perspective on why lighting matters and how it can be approached more thoughtfully in practice.
A range of resources is now available, including the webinar recording, speaker slides, Shelley’s quick guide to buying lightbulbs, and related reading on the theme of lighting in mental health.
With expert insights spanning science, practice and policy, this session highlighted how lighting is not just functional, it is a critical component of care.
If this is an area of interest to you, it is well worth revisiting.
Don’t miss out on what’s coming up
Explore upcoming events, join our community, and be part of the conversation shaping better mental health environments.
Join the Design in Mental Health Network Community
Everything we do at DiMHN is rooted in a shared belief: that thoughtful, inclusive and evidence-informed design can improve mental health outcomes.
Across our webinars, conferences, exhibitions and resources, we bring together lived experience, clinical insight, research and design expertise to shape better environments for care.
Whether you join us for a free webinar, attend the conference, explore the exhibition, or connect with our growing network, we would love to have you be part of what comes next.
