A POSTCARD FROM CREATIVE WRITES

Dear All,

I hope you are enjoying the Summer.

July was a busy workshop month, both for the Creative Writes Workshops in Muswell Hill and the regular workshops I deliver in Community Centres, Care Homes & Sheltered Housing Schemes. There was a July block of three workshops and a Themed Workshop at the end of the month – Myriad of Objects. The block of three workshops included creating story & characters with full shopping baskets as inspiration! We also looked at poetry and memoir. The Myriad of Objects Themed Workshop gave the group time to tell each-other about objects that meant something to them, choose an object from my collection & heighten our descriptive powers and engage the senses. We also created a range of scenarios around the same object.

Here are comments from participants at the block of three July Workshops and the July Myriad of Objects Themed Workshop:

“Well – you did it again…Another brilliantly well run workshop! Love your workshops, ideas, enthusiasm, approach and wow again…meeting other amazing people. I felt I had known Paul, Joel and Kinga for more than 3 evenings. Immense fun and as always I learnt so much.” JW

“Thank you so much for a wonderful evening. I want to thank you for putting on this workshop as I really enjoyed it. It’s hard to describe the tangible rewards I got from it but you certainly showed me how to find confidence in myself despite feeling awkward about some of the things I had written. It was also difficult to not receive any feedback, as I really really really like receiving feedback – but I think it really was for my benefit to be able to share without receiving feedback and showed me the real value of just appreciating your own work for what it is. Not worrying about how others see it. Because ultimately everyone has an opinion but that doesn’t mean everyone’s opinion is right or good for you.Thank you for allowing me to share myself in a safe and respectful environment.

I really enjoyed it all!” DP

I have continued to deliver regular Read Aloud sessions in Care Homes, where the majority of residents have dementia. There has been a powerful response to the poems and images I have taken along. The interaction between residents & the discussion has been wonderful and staff have commented on the laughter in the sessions and how normal it all seems.

Emmeline Pankhurst Day was on 14th July, so I themed my creative writing workshops in sheltered housing schemes and community centres around this – looking at photographs and letters to trigger our own responses. Once again, powerful responses!

I have been loving every minute of my work. Creative Writes group workshops will continue in the Autumn – new dates coming soon! Our Masterclasses, Skype and all other workshops are ongoing.

Thanks for reading.

Bye for now, I will write again soon.

Nichola