A Creative Space for Collective Care & Connection

Presented by Berlin Mental Health Labs – Supported by AOK Nordost & SEKIS Berlin

If your path has led you here, you are likely looking for something deeper than another transactional networking event, a dry self-help book, or a fleeting night out.

Berlin is a city of incredible movement: full of people striving, building, healing, and arriving. Yet, beneath the vibrant surface, it is incredibly easy to feel a major disconnect. The endless search for housing, the cold weight of everyday bureaucracy, and the struggle to maintain your well-being inside outdated, cookie-cutter structures can leave you feeling isolated and mentally strained.

Too often, modern culture tells us that mental health is a solo project: “Go fix yourself, find a therapist, and practice self-care behind closed doors.” While personal healing is vital, true wellness is social.

We citizens have one main thing in common: the pursuit of a good life despite challenges, feeling empowered to live our true nature, and feeling connected rather than isolated. That’s why we are stepping out of isolation and into community.

What is Creative Collective Care?

At the Berlin Mental Health Labs, we are creating a space where everyday international Berliners come together to practice Creative Collective Care (CCC). This is a simple, beautiful agreement to participate in each other’s resilience:

Shared Responsibility: Feeling mutually responsible for our neighbors and the energy we bring to our communities. It’s understanding that our thoughts, moods, and actions ripple out to impact those around us.

Shared Agency: Moving from being a passive passenger of the city’s chaos to actively creating solutions together. You aren’t just a patient, a client, or a passive “immigrant” waiting for a structure to save you or tell you what to do – you are a creator who can actively participate and shape what’s available for you and for others.

No matter what health or mental challenges you carry, you hold a unique puzzle piece 🧩 that our wider international community needs. Following the success of our June 2026 Kick-Off Lab, the Summer Vibez Lab is here to help you find where your puzzle piece 🧩 fits.

Choose Your 90-Minute Workshop:

You won’t just sit and listen. You will choose one of three interactive workshops designed to unlock your strengths, move past mental blocks, and help your workshop-group brainstorm a concrete, actionable “experiment” for collective care in Berlin.

Workshop 1: Archetype Readings (with Alida Boscatto) Explore special archetypes using Tarot to map out your natural talents, understand what unique strengths you bring to the Berlin community, and clarify what you need from others.

Workshop 2: Collaging Creative Care (with Anja Söyünmez):Through cutting, arranging, and layering, we will translate abstract feelings of care into visual forms. You will leave with a personal artifact that serves as a gentle reminder of your own capacity to piece new and seemingly unrelated things into meaning. These final visuals will then be published online / printed as flyers and posters to promote the next Berlin Mental Health Lab: A Light in the Dark Lab!

Workshop 3: Play and Embodied Expression using Electronic Percussion (with Cordele Glass AKA Hawt Coco): Drop out of your head and into your body. Use rhythm, music, and physical expression to unlock your creative flow and channel it into collective ideas.

Our Shared Journey for the Day

*subject to change before and during the event depending on the flow of the day

What You Will Walk Away With

By the end of our day together, you will be able to:

1. Understand & Own CCC: Confidently see and feel how collective care directly remedies the main mental-health impacting challenges of international life in Berlin.
2. Speak Your Ideas: Articulate community concepts you care about and feel inspired to take them to the next level.
3. Take Your Next Step: Effortlessly identify at least one concrete, actionable next step to keep your momentum going using Berlin’s existing community resources.
4. Walk a way with lifelong connections and a library of resources to foster those connections!

Reserve Your Spot

Thanks to our institutional backing from SEKIS Berlin and AOK Nordost, this entire lab is fully funded for you.

Because we prioritize creating a warm, genuinely connected, and intimate environment, spaces are strictly limited to 40 participants. Clicking the pink button at the bottom of this page with the information in the small form will secure your place. You will receive your ticket via email immediately. There is nothing else you need to do except show up exactly as you are!

Keep in mind that this is a workshop – please be on time and plan to stay for the whole duration for everyone and yourself to receive maximum benefits.

About the Project

The Berlin Mental Health Labs were founded by Taylor Coburn (a US American living in Berlin for 15+ years) alongside SEKIS Berlin and our funder, the statutory health insurer AOK Nordost. This project was built by a normal person just like you to give all international and native citizens of Berlin the chance to empower and resource each other for a better Berlin life.

Have an idea for a future Lab?

We welcome all community-led ideas that serve our shared goal! Once you have immersed yourself in our vision, send your pitch to: internationals@sekis-berlin.de. Let us know how your unique puzzle piece can help shape the next generation of collective care.

“Healing isn’t about isolating until we are ‘perfect’ enough to emerge. It’s about showing up exactly as we are, holding our unique puzzle piece, and finding where it connects.” -A note from the Kick-Off Lab