No Labels No Walls Action Monday: Guided Functional Peer Support

Since 2012, the civic and human rights organization Kukunori has been seeking new ways to work for mental health - for instance through Kukunori’s cultural workshops (‘kulttuuripaja’ in Finnish), in which patients themselves guide workshops for other patients. These cultural workshops have become an award-winning model labeled Guided Functional Peer Support (GFP).

This model has been replicated in prisons and elsewhere to increase participation and autonomy. During this session the model is introduced by one of it’s founders Markus Raivio, the director of Kukunori, the centre of wellbeing and culture.



Kukunori is an umbrella organization working with other mental health and disability organizations that are active in the field. By designing holistic support mechanisms and solutions, and tackling different actors involved in the mental health system, Markus is constantly thinking about new ways of doing and innovating, bringing design thinking into the health sector and working closely with the intended beneficiaries to co-design for better health.

Markus is convinced that established ways of working, as well as frameworks for health, healthcare and social planning, need to be questioned, and that new perspectives and innovations need to be brought in.