Trinity College Students’ Union, See Change, Fighting Words and the Union of Students in Ireland succeeded in breaking the Guinness World Record for “the most people to write a story”, with 953 students contributing to the telling of a lengthy and surreal narrative. The record was broken last night, just before 8pm. The previous record stood at 838 contributors. The event was planned as part of TCDSU’s Mental Health Week, with the slogan for the week being, “mental health is part of everybody’s story”.
The organisers set up a marquee in the Physics garden on Trinity College’s grounds, with ushers gathering students who were willing to write their line of the story. Preparations for the event began at 6am, with Welfare Officer Louisa Miller on hand to supervise the construction of the marquee. Miller had been planning the event with USI Welfare Officer Scott Ahern since the summer.
TCDSU President Ryan Bartlett said: “It is fantastic for Trinity to break this world record, especially because it involved a joint effort with other people from around Dublin and even a few tourists! The broad range of people taking part in this is indicative of the message: mental health is part of everyone’s story; regardless of who you are, regardless of how your mental health is, it is a part of you and your story. The story itself won’t be winning any awards, but even without the world record today was a massive success because it got everyone talking about mental health and started to dismantle the stigma attached to it.”
Commenting on the event USI President Gary Redmond said, “This is a fantastic achievement for all those involved, getting 953 people to contribute to a story isn’t an easy task let alone doing it on the theme of Mental Health, a subject that people can find it hard to talk about. Today we engaged 953 on the importance of being open and mindful of their own mental health.
