Many of us hear voices that others don’t:  three in four of us will hear a voice that no one else hears at some point in our lives, often connected with trying life circumstances like loss of a loved one, or times of great stress.

The large majority of us do not struggle and even find the experience beneficial.

Yet some do undoubtedly struggle with what they experience.

What we do know is that people who struggle tend to be left to deal with their difficult experience alone – leaving them feeling powerless and disconnected from others.

Hearing Voices is a human experience

Even if you believe that a person who hears voices must be ill, that they do hear voices is still a human experience. And they need you to believe that too.

The hardest thing for people who hear voices is how they get treated by people who don’t.

Carnival des Voix is not about illness or treatment, it is about exploring and expressing human experience about expanding the space in which we can listen with and understand each other live – and about having some fun while we do.

Voices can give voice

Yet we know that finding ways to express pain, to talk, find new ways of talking, new ways of expressing can be very helpful.

Also voices, and especially those that are most difficult and painful to hear, often give voice to that which a person cannot yet express themselves.

What if…

What if we created spaces in which we can make and explore using puppets as but one way to express and give voice to that which we have yet to find a way we can express.?

Taboos
Voices can be very taboo:  can talk about subjects which are taboo, or use language that is taboo, making it more difficult to talk with those who don’t understand.

 

“Avatar therapy” with dollar store supplies?

There has been much interest in “avatar therapy”, expensive technology and studies to demonstrate that people who struggle with voices can work with them.

Many of us have, for some time been doing similar things, not as treatment or intervention by others but as creative exploration of experience, expression and emancipation.

This works with much smaller budgets and much simpler technology, and no wait-lists or other paraphernalia that comes with being made to waiting on experts to fix us.