Swarm and Mental Health

'Celebrating the Seasons' investigates and applies the Swarm methodology in psychiatry and other mental health care with the aim of making mental health care more inclusive, physical and patient-centred. The Swarm methodology is a new artistic practice, inviting participants to join a mime-choreography inspired by the movement patterns of birds. Developed by Floor van Leeuwen in 2021 in response to the isolation and social distancing challenges of the pandemic, swarming destabilizes and queers the dominant urban landscape (Boer, 2023). The swarm invites participants to carry small speakers and move through the landscape to a live DJ set, negotiating their direction as they move. This dynamic, self-organized movement fosters a temporary community centered on joy and connection, challenging conventional spectatorship by encouraging spontaneous participation (De Langen, 2022).

This methodology was adapted for the Parnassia group psychiatric clinic at Poortugaal in 2022, by invitation from humanistic chaplain Sylvie de Kubber. De Kubber was observing issues in psychiatry such as increasing levels of discrimination, isolation, medicalization, loneliness and scarcity. This brings up questions about the current way Dutch psychiatry functions and asks for new forms of psychiatry (De Wachter, 2012; Denys, 2020; Sphronsen & Van Os, 2021; Scheepers, 2021). 

This critique aligns with broader concerns on the dominant empirical methodologies in psychiatry, which tend to reproduce top-down approaches, prioritize symptom reduction over resilience-building and separate mental from physical health. Furthermore, feminist care ethics has long challenged traditional care paradigms by emphasizing relationality, vulnerability, intersectionality, and justice (Tronto, 1993; Walker, 2009; Brugère, 2018; Nistelrooij, 2022). In recent years, factors such as the COVID-19 pandemic, rising social justice movements, and political shifts have further highlighted the need for care approaches that engage with these topics. Feminist perspectives further deepen this critique by emphasizing how knowledge production is shaped by repressive and Euro-centric assumptions that positions itself higher in legitimacy over the views of its lay-audience (Haraway, 1988; Lepecki, 2013; Borgdorff, 2012 ). The room for fluidity, openness and patient-centredness in Swarming offers a means to reimagine and humanize psychiatric care in an inclusive way. “Who we care for, how we care for them, and what motivates that care, cannot be detached from wider politics that struggles against discrimination and cruelty.” (Thompson, 2023).

Both clients and professionals were invited to Swarm together through and around the terrain of the clinic, celebrating and questioning freedom of movement. Resulting in aesthetic and magical experiences as described by one participant: “I forgot I got happiness inside of me, Swarming brought it out” and another: “this was a positive trauma”. These quotes illustrate Swarming's potential to create radical new experiences within psychiatric contexts.

In the years that followed we have swarmed every season at Poortugaal. Unlike traditional art-based therapy, which typically uses art as a tool for exploring mental health states with the goal of recovery (Leavy, 2018), our approach centers on artistic performance and participatory engagement to uncover embodied tacit experiences that are often overlooked by conventional therapeutic interventions. 

Swarm as a therapeutic tool is not a problem-based therapy but has its own trajectory. Sarah Ahmed states that “The work of inhabiting space involves a dynamic negotiation between what is familiar and unfamiliar, such that it is still possible for the world to create new impressions, depending on which way we turn, which affects what is within reach” (Ahmed, 2006). Swarm provides a public space setting that brings into focus the shared experience between the participant and their surroundings with the participant at the forefront, exercising their autonomy in decision making. The participant practices their individual processes of navigating through the group (which includes and is derived from both a collective cultural background i.e. Dutch, and diverse subcultures and identities). It is them and only them who have the power to choose how they interact with other SWARMers, nature, objects, infrastructure, people within the surrounding community, and the music the DJ plays. Additionally, that power extends to the choice to contribute to the ever-changing (unspoken) dialogue that guides the swarm as it moves through space. This act of contribution once again provides opportunities for participants to exercise autonomy thus empowering them to gain control over how they function within the micro-society that is SWARM while also practice self-actualisation. This practice is reflective of client-centred occupational therapy practices. 

As part of the ongoing research on understanding the value of SWARM, an impact assessment was conducted. Using grounded theory and inductive and deductive coding the following emerged:

Key ideas and feelings expressed fall under the following categories:

 Joy & enjoyment: “I have enjoyed”, “felt happy”, “very nice to be with it”

Gratitude: “THANKFUL”

Freedom & relaxation: “Free and relaxed”

Connection: “felt connected with unknown pure souls”, “everyone free & connected”

Empowerment: “… someone stood up from the scootmobile literally and figuratively”

Substance free fun: “didn’t know you can have so much fun sober”, “dancing can be without drinks and drugs”

Desire for Continuity: “Swarm must keep existing”, “come back soon”, “I’m gonna miss you”

Deeper Axial coding revealed the following categories and subthemes:

Emotional Impact: Joy, happiness, relaxation, fun, spiritual gratitude

Social Connectedness: Feeling of belonging, togetherness, intergenerational bonding, unknown souls connecting

Embodied Freedom/Healing: Movement, dancing as liberation, release, healing

Substance-Free Enjoyment: Sober fun, breaking assumptions about needing substances for joy

Appreciation: Appreciation for music, DJs, facilitators,

Inclusivity & Accessibility: Participation of disabled participants, intergroup unity

Desire for Continuity: Requests for return, repetition, extended time, “must keep dancing”

Using grounded theory, we can relate the data to the following:

Affect Theory: The dance space facilitates affective transmission—joy, warmth, connection are felt and shared bodily.

Embodied Healing: Movement and dance are not just for recreation and accomplishing physical tasks, but a site of emotional release and reconnection.

Substance Use Studies: Challenges assumptions that pleasure and freedom require intoxication.

Feminist Care Ethics: Participants express reciprocal gratitude and care (e.g., toward DJs, facilitators, elders).

In response to swarming at Antes Poortugaal, new SWARM’s emerged in collaboration with mental health care practitioners, such as Herstel Academie, Humanistisch Verbond and Psychologues Maghreb.

Psychologist Souhail Abounnaim of Psychologues Maghreb proposed to co-create a SWARM to support children and young people in Morocco recovering from the devastating earthquake of September 8, 2023. This catastrophe caused widespread destruction, particularly in rural areas like Talat N’Yakoub, leaving deep emotional scars on affected communities. Over a year later, many of the large corporations had left the area, while the trauma left by the earthquake remains. Recognizing the need for innovative approaches to healing, we developed a Swarm program that combines collective dance, art, and therapy to support children processing trauma, rebuild resilience, and foster a sense of hope for the future.

Through creative, community-driven interventions, Swarm empowers participants to confront mental health challenges while breaking the silence surrounding therapy in Morocco.

Dancing through a place that holds trauma recontextualizes the space, and allows participants to make new memories there.Swarm events are dynamic, participatory experiences designed to create moments of joy and freedom for participants while opening pathways to deeper emotional healing.

The event, held in Tinmel on July 8, 2024, demonstrated the potential of this approach. The event was aimed at children, who were invited to join a collective dance event, but their joy ignited their parents and siblings to also join the dance. Before and after the swarm, participants were invited to share their feelings in a group conversation lead by a psychologist.

The event’s success went beyond the immediate impact of the event. The Swarm generated trust in the families who participated, and many of them applied for long-term therapeutic support offered for free by Terra Psy, a local organisation, breaking down cultural taboos around mental health. 

SWARM’s vision is to further develop its multi-disciplinary approach by including citizen scientists as collaborators. In doing so, it hopes to advance the pushing of boundaries that delineate who the decision makers are in the treatment trajectory of the participants/clients. It further hopes to build a relationship of mutual trust and shared values with stakeholders to address hindrances to client involvement in client-centred practices and any reluctance or unwillingness of clients to be primary decision makers. Swarm’s multi-disciplinary team brings with it both a skill set and diverse points of resonance that allow for multiple points of connection for participants/clients. Participants/clients who are diversely aged, educated, gendered, come from diverse ethnic backgrounds and cultures, and have different histories of reliance on others, with each performance, can all be present in a way that respects the moment of performance. Furthermore, they can be part of something that not only contributes to their healing of self but flips the coin and provides a ‘exhibition’ of their process of self-actualisation for the more acute or severely cognitive impaired participants/clients as an empowering example of creativity and self-connection. 

With each performance, Swarm collectively learns and develops. It has grown into acting as a medium for bridging gaps between members of communities as well as in relationships between the client and mental health service provider. Seeking to promote pleasure activism, political activism, and overall act as an abundant source of positive energy, Swarm continues to advocate for a change of focus, purpose, and application methodologies in human interaction.