Mad Chicks is about women psychiatric patients and survivors of the psychiatric system, who are sick of being treated like crap and generally sidelined. It is put together by women who work as part of Mad Pride, a user-led mental health civil rights movement, committed to ending discrimination against psychiatric patients, promoting survivor equality and celebrating mad culture.
Mad Chicks believes that a women-focussed organisation and campaign can highlight issues with particular female resonance, such as mixed wards, childcare, assertiveness and rights, sexism in the NHS - and provide a more conducive space for women to discuss their experience of services.
They draw on the considerable creativity already existing within Mad Pride and amongst its contacts and supporters, in order to show what extraordinary things female service users have done and are able to do in supportive environments and elsewhere.
Mad Chicks is being launched in style on Saturday November 27th 2004, with a day and evening of events exploring, raging about and improving women's mental health. The Union Chapel, Highbury, North London will be host to an arts & mental health info-fair, creative workshops, debates, video, artwork, massage, a cafe and a live gig in the evening, with music, comedy, poetry, live arts and general merriment. The line-up will include some of the great mad women of art and rock & roll. The daytime events will be for women and girls, and the evening will be for everyone.
Get involved! Find out more from  madchicks@hotmail.com or www.geocities.com/mad_chicks_uk or write to Mad Chicks, c/o Esther Leslie, School of English and Humanities, Birkbeck, Malet Street, London, WC1E 7HX