A new search-engine-based website hopes to revolutionise the promotion and public awareness of ‘mind body spirit’ events in the UK.
For the first time, claim the co-ordinators of the website, Merlin’s Diary, users can access a centralised listings site, complete with public reviews and events feedback that instantly brings together the most up-to-date national mind body spirit event information. The listings provide information about hundreds of talks, courses, workshops, seminars, retreats, festivals and other events for interests such as yoga, nutrition, healing and meditation.
Merlin’s Diary includes cross-reference functions, where for example, a weekend festival that contains multiple workshops can be listed both as the event itself and as the individual presentations that make up the weekend.
Event listings are free to submit and the website also offers a version for access on mobile phones. A ticket-selling system is planned to be introduced this year and a US website is in development.
“Having been hosting mind body spirit events for many years, it became clear how difficult it was to disseminate event information to a targeted audience of people who love these events,” said Barry Durdant-Hollamby, an events organiser and author from East Sussex, who is part of the family partnership behind the new website. “What I needed was a simple, well organised website where a user could just put in a search term such as ‘meditation’ or ‘happiness,’ together with their postcode and instantly find events that might be of interest, complete with location and directions. That’s how Merlin’s Diary came to life.”