ABOUT US

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Deep Space Mind 215 [DSM.215] is a Philadelphia-based mental health and wellness cooperative that seeks to invest in community-grown practices, systems, and initiatives that improve and enhance the wellness of our city.

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We are composed of healing workers with lived experience of mental health challenges, psychiatric institutionalization or incarceration, and/or neurodiversities or  psychiatric disabilities that put one at risk for institutionalization.

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DSM.215 centers, protects, and nurtures the healing work of those who have been traditionally underserved by the psychiatric/non-profit industrial complex in this city, including Black women and femmes, and queer people, youth, and those who are unhoused.

 

This co-op seeks to provide an alternative pathway for our neighbors to gain practical experience in facilitating workshops, community-based research, organizing, and any other skills that help to build alternative systems of community care, or allow entry into the mental health profession locally.

 

DSM.215 builds upon local and justice-centered systems of knowledge, including Afrofuturism, local organizing history, disability justice, and new and ancestral local praxis and practice around mental health.

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DSM.215 began as a workshop developed by Ras Stanford in 2015 for the Afrofuturism Now! Festival at WORM Rotterdam. It has since grown into a sustained community-grown project, and in 2020, Mel Brown joined the project to co-found Deep Space Mind 215 Cooperative. In 2021, DSM.215 became a fiscally sponsored program of The Federation of Neighborhood Centers.

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DSM.215 Co-op seeks board members and community partners as we continue building towards sustainability and impact.