Rai Waddingham
Rai is a singer/songwriter with personal experience of hearing, seeing and sensing things other people don't. Having spent much of her early 20s in mental health units, she now works to promote humane, ethical and creative responses to people in distress. She is an Open Dialogue practitioner, part of the international Hearing Voices Movement and studying for a PhD in Survivor Knowledge (the knowledge gained through lived experience).
As a singer/songwriter, Rai's music has always related to the things that she's has experienced, survived and needed to find ways of living with - whether it's official 'mental health stuff' or not. She's found that music is, without fail, a window into the way her mind works ... even if she only recognises some of the layers within her songs years later.