Case study: Nottingham Healthcare NHS Trust

Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust signed the Time to Change pledge in March 2009 and planned a large scale local social marketing campaign in October 2009 to coincide with the national campaign.

The Trust’s own anti stigma campaign had been running since 2007 and signing up with Time to Change allowed them to join a national campaign whilst still keeping their own work going.

In order to gain as much exposure as possible, the Trust decided early on to run with the Time to Change brand, putting adverts on buses all over Nottinghamshire. These adverts coincided with a radio commercial commissioned by the Trust which was also broadcast throughout October across Nottinghamshire. 

Advertising and promotional materials were all linked to Time to Change and working under this umbrella brand meant it was easier to form partnerships with organisations that were already linked into Time to Change.     The Trust also ran a Virtual Art Exhibition at Broadway Cinema. The exhibition was art created by service users and displayed for two weeks.

To mark World Mental Health Day the Trust ran six Living Libraries.

"Living Libraries were a great way of taking the anti stigma message out to the general public as they work on the principles of social contact theory, one of the principles the Time to Change campaign is based on.  Over the six Living Libraries we had 122 loans equating to 61 hours of conversation about mental health, and that’s not including all the conversation we couldn’t monitor. "

The Living Libraries' success was based entirely on partnership working and the Trust worked with the City and County Library Service, Rethink, and Mind as well as smaller organisations and individuals to bring this together.

All the publicity allowed the grassroots events to feel like part of the wider campaign, and added to the national campaign as well as benefiting from it.  It was a fantastic month which inspired everybody that had been involved and took the anti stigma message out to the general public.