At the end of June, just a couple of weeks after so many of our friends and activists across Belfast were burnt out, displaced, or threatened from their homes by racist pogroms, members of PPR’s Take Back the City team travelled to Belo Horizonte, Brazil.

Another great session with our young eco warriors! 🌱 We had a great session harvesting our teasel seeds across the Mackies site! Our group deserved their well earned s’mores back at the Forthspring community garden ✊ 🌱 🏡

Bígí linn for the first screening of the new Take Back the City documentary, made by Scáthán Collective, as part of Glór Na Móna’s Féile na Carraige! 🎬 The documentary explores the current stage of the campaign, using the fight for homes on Mackie’s to explore the wider housing crisis.

The Department for Communities recently published their updated housing statistics this summer, for the first time counting the number of homeless individuals as well as households. The numbers were shocking…

Individual actions like being active and taking notice of the world around you can be so important for your mental wellbeing, but we think there might be more to it than that… What do you think is missing? 👀 #Give5

On this day in 1943, PPR's founder, trade unionist, women's rights and human rights activist Inez McCormack was born. Along with many others, Inez fought relentlessly to secure commitments to human rights and equality in the Good Friday Agreement.

In August, NISRA & the PSNI published their hate crime stats for the year 2025/26. 📈 Racially motivated hate incidents rose by 503 to 2,561, while crimes rose by 268 to 1,615. But how do these numbers break down in your local area? Visit werisetogether.ie

Structural factors like inequality, poverty, discrimination, unemployment, and homelessness all affect our mental health. In recent years, global organisations like the UN and WHO have urged governments to pay more attention to these social drivers of mental distress.

Good relations. A useful framework to help the state promote equality between different groups? Or a problematic, ambiguous term that can be used as an excuse to avoid tackling inequality?

At our recent housing support drop-ins, we’ve had people with a huge range of issues, and have helped people to send complaints to the Housing Executive, Mears, housing associations and private landlords…

A huge thank you to the staff at Central Library for welcoming us so warmly for Culture Night #CNB26 💛 There was a great buzz throughout the evening, with so many people stopping by to choose some healing words, listen to poems read aloud by Maxi & Maura, and have conversations about mental health.

‘Words Strong Enough to Heal’ We’re bringing the New Script Travelling Apothecary to Culture Night! 🎭 Come find our stall at Belfast Central Library tomorrow, Friday 18th September from 4-8pm 📍

New Script warmly welcomes Mental Health Matters for Women from the Women's Regional Consortium. This research powerfully highlights the gendered nature of emotional distress and trauma and why we must connect the symptoms to their root causes. www.womensregionalconsortiumni.org.uk/wp-content/u...

A huge thank you to Professor Kevin Vowles, QUB - School of Psychology for meeting with New Script activists — and for endorsing #Give5. His research into pain rehabilitation shows just how closely pain, distress and social circumstances are connected.

In May 2026, as part of Féile na gCloigíní Gorma, CATU and Take Back the City took part in a conversation about the impact the housing crisis in Gaeltacht areas was having on the Irish language. The most recent guest blog on our website is taken from this talk 👉 www.nlb.ie/blog/296/dat...

The Royal College of Pediatrics and Child Health new report estimates that 45.2% of 16-year-olds in Northern Ireland have a probable ‘mental illness’. It also reports that wellbeing among 11-year-olds is at its lowest recorded level since 2010 👉 www.rcpch.ac.uk/work-we-do/s...

We had a great planning meeting with our #TakeBacktheCity activism team yesterday! 🏠 Loads of passion and energy in this group, who have been affected by the housing crisis in so many different ways. Keep an eye out to see what we get up to over the next few months… 👀 takebackthecity.ie

The Public Health Agency #Take5 campaign focuses on how individuals can look after their own mental health and wellbeing. The New Script #Give5 Framework focuses on what governments can do at a system level to tackle the mental health crisis. We can’t have one without the other.

When Daniel McCrossan MLA asked the Minister for Health why 1 in 4 women in NI are on antidepressants, the Minister replied with a dismissive, “we dont have the information.” If he doesn’t have this information, we have some questions we think his department should be urgently asking…

Have you visited the Anaka Archives blog on Substack yet? 👩‍💻 The Anaka Women's Collective team have been writing about some of their amazing work on education equality, art projects, as well as some personal stories from the community. Find it here 👉 anakaarchives.substack.com

Former New Script organiser Lisa Morrison talked to @belfastlive.co.uk about her experience of Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) and how it informed a new international study on the treatment which she authored.

Many thanks to Diane Forsythe MLA for her parliamentary question that helped us to establish that refugees have accounted for less than 1% of all social homes allocated across NI over the past 5 years 🏠 Read our full investigation here 👉 www.nlb.ie/investigatio...

Our Areeg & Michaela talked to Tara Mills for this BBC Radio 4 story about the emergency response to the racist violence this June, alongside other legends from Mornington Community Project and elsewhere 💛 You can listen to the full episode here 👉 www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

New research into chronic pain led by Professor Kevin Vowles at QUB found that people living in the most deprived areas were experiencing far higher levels of chronic pain and pain related depression. Read it here: bit.ly/3Uw2z1G

Belfast pain rehabilitation programme at Knockbracken 'gives patients back control'

Julie-Ann Walkden is among more than 100 patients who have completed a hands-on pain rehabilitation programme.

bit.ly

More than 50,000 households are on the housing waiting list. Thousands of children here are growing up without a home. But those in charge are still tweaking around the edges of the current system. Our housing crisis requires urgent action, not minor tweaks. Build homes now. takebackthecity.ie

We say this regularly, but it bears repeating given the continued use of the term "illegal immigrant": it is not illegal to enter a country in order to claim asylum, regardless of the way in which a person arrives. #RefugeesWelcome #SupportPeopleSeekingAsylum

Credit to Diane Dodds MLA for asking questions that have brought disturbing data on seclusion in mental health services into the public domain. And to Paul Hainsworth Irish News for covering it 👉 www.irishnews.com/news/norther...

Sharp rise in seclusion of mental health patients by Northern Ireland trust previously under scrutiny for ‘last resort’ tactic

Southern Health Trust saw more vulnerable patients secluded in 2025 than previous four years combined

irishnews.com

1 in 5 people in NI received antidepressants last year 💊 But why does that matter, and what do people’s lives look like behind the prescriptions? New Script digs a little deeper into these stats and the people they represent. Find out more about the campaign here 👉 www.nlb.ie/campaigns/me...

In her latest article, Azadeh Sobout explores the work of Take Back the City and some of our friends in CATU Belfast & Gairdín an Phobail, exploring new ways to make our city work for the people who live here and the environment that surrounds them. Read it here progressivecity.net/taking-back-...

Taking Back the City: Land Justice, Meitheal, and the Making of Urban Commons in Belfast - Progressive City: Radical Alternatives

By Azadeh Sobout The following piece is part of Progressive City’s “Keeping the ‘Public’ in Public Space” series, which asks authors to address the way public spaces are governed, restricted and/or po...

progressivecity.net

“Just the empathy and the love and the power. It’s draíocht, it’s magic.” This time last year we welcomed Damien Dempsey to The MAC for the launch of the Ticking Boxes music video, created by bereaved families calling for an end to preventable harm and death in our mental health system.