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Hello all, as I type – two men in luminous yellow jackets and hoods are outside my top floor window in what looks like a large bucket, trying to work out how to attach Christmas lights to a very tall street lamp! It is midnight and raining. They do not seem to have done this before – they have already given up on the lamp opposite!
The main reason for typing is however to tell you about the Creative Writes workshop that I delivered last week for Dyslexia Awareness Week!
We had a full house and a lively group, many of whom had not written creatively for several years. We worked in pairs, talking about objects that meant something to us and why. We then told the group our partner’s story. It was a great way to learn a bit about eachother as many of the group had just met. It was a large group of 16, unusual for Creative Writes I know!
I explained about free flow writing and no feedback. We did a warm up ten minutes free flow and I listened to the comforting sound of pens scratching across notebooks! Lots of people read out their work, it was wonderful to hear.
I then gave each table a selection of random objects and they each spent some time writing about one of the objects – talking in its voice if they wanted.
In pairs, they constructed a story or poem which featured their object – mapping out the beginning, middle and end beforehand if they chose to.
The writers had the option to pretend that they were looking at their objects through a lens, zooming in on the detail and then zooming out – taking in the surroundings. Were there any people around? What could they see? Where was the object?
The results were exciting with a range of story & poetry and there was a great energy in the group.
It was a pleasure to teach the workshop!