Our Events
Check back regularly for new events as we update the list almost every week.
NOTE: All times are UK time unless otherwise specified.
Are you a Lapidus member who is running an event? Complete the form below to submit your event for inclusion on our website and e-newsletter.
- Lapidus Member Event Only
- Online via Zoom
- From £0.00
- 05/07/2025
A Personal Reflection on the Evolution of the Field of Words and Writing for Wellbeing & Lapidus
Presenter: Celia Hunt
Saturday 5th July, 10:00am-11:15am.
In this presentation I will endeavour to give a picture of my involvement in the field of creative writing for well-being, including the evolution of Lapidus and the MA in Creative Writing and Personal Development at the University of Sussex, which I ran for 14 years until its discontinuation in 2010. I will talk about some of the research I did into the therapeutic and developmental effects of creative writing that I carried out during my years at Sussex and what I and the tutor team learned from our teaching of the MA. I will also talk about the research I have done since I retired and the writing of my self-analytic autobiography which explores literary and poetic material I have written across my lifetime. We will end with a short writing exercise.
About the Presenter
Celia is Reader Emerita in Continuing Education (Creative Writing) at Sussex University, where she ran the MA in Creative Writing and Personal Development. She is the author of four books: The Self on the Page (1998) (with Fiona Sampson), Therapeutic Dimensions of Autobiography in Creative Writing (2000), Writing: Self and Reflexivity (2006) (also with Fiona Sampson) and Transformative Learning through Creative Life Writing (2013), as well as articles and chapters in other books. Before joining Sussex University, Celia worked as Literature Officer at the South East Arts Board, where she set up writing residencies in health, educational and social care settings. She was a founding member of Lapidus and its first Chair. She is now retired but continues to write poetry and autobiography.
Zoom Recording
Bibliography
Download Here
About the Lapidus Living Research Community
The Lapidus Living Research Community (LLRC) meets on the first Saturday of every month via Zoom to discuss all things research, with a focus on qualitative arts-based research practices, theory and methods.
All Lapidus members are welcome, regardless of research experience. FREE AND NO TICKETS REQUIRED. Use the Zoom link above to access the event.
- Zoom
- From £25.00
- 12/07/2025
Through reading, reflection, discussing written resource/s, self-attunement, listening, writing and sharing, we will contemplate the theme of ‘completing’. In this workshop, we will be looking at and discussing resources that help us consider the process of completing – projects, plans, processes etc – whether this is achievable and how important this can be which will lead into our own writing.
For this workshop you will need a notebook and a pen.
- Lapidus Member Event Only
- Online via Zoom
- From £0.00
- 02/08/2025
Mitigating Stress and Enhancing Creativity among Teachers
Presenter: Emica Calogjera
Saturday 2nd August, 16:00pm-17:15pm.
Worldwide, stress and burnout persist as significant challenges for teachers, contributing to feelings of anxiety and depression. Burnout can have detrimental effects on teachers’ health and is a known risk factor for diminished physical and mental well-being. Understanding the prevalence and factors associated with stress, burnout, anxiety, and depression among educators is crucial for addressing this pressing public health issue. Kyriacou (2001) identifies seven common sources of stress encountered by teachers: students with negative attitudes towards school and lacking motivation, disruptive behaviour and general classroom management issues, rapid changes in curriculum and organizational structures, unfavourable working conditions, including issues related to promotions, time constraints, conflicts with colleagues and parents and a sense of undervaluation within society.
Taking into consideration these prevalent stressors, I have developed as a part of my CAPF training a series of bibliotherapy and poetry therapy interactive workshops specifically for Croatian language teachers in primary and secondary schools. These workshops focus on mindfulness, navigating transitions, fostering creativity, promoting a sense of belonging, and enhancing empathy, following the Hynes & Hynes-Berry (2012) four steps bibliotherapy process.
About the Presenter
Emica Calogjera Rogić graduated in Croatian Language and South Slavic Philology and holds a master’s in Comparative Literature from the University of Zagreb. She has taught in Croatia and abroad, including at the Sorbonne in Paris, and now works as editor-in-chief at Naklada Ljevak. Emica is currently training to become a Certified Workshop Leader in Bibliopoetry Therapy with the International Federation for Biblio/Poetry Therapy (IFBPT). As part of her certification, she created and led workshops for over 600 teachers in Croatia, focusing on stress prevention and creativity. She was also a partner in the first European bibliopoetry therapy conference in Budapest (October 2024).
Zoom Link
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85163678537
About the Lapidus Living Research Community
The Lapidus Living Research Community (LLRC) meets on the first Saturday of every month via Zoom to discuss all things research, with a focus on qualitative arts-based research practices, theory and methods.
All Lapidus members are welcome, regardless of research experience. FREE AND NO TICKETS REQUIRED. Use the Zoom link above to access the event.
- Lapidus Member Event Only
- Online via Zoom
- From £0.00
- 06/09/2025
Farmacological fictions. The limits of bibliotherapy
Presenter: Jurgen Pieters
Saturday 6th September, Time TBC.
In this talk I want to discuss work in progress in which I look at a number of scenes in novels in which the effects of reading are quite ambivalent, not simply positive or therapeutic as current reflections on bibliotherapy have us believe. I want to argue, though, that theories and practices of bibliotherapy do well to take into account the fact that literary writings can serve as medicine as well as poison. They are ‘farmacological’ objects, in the meaning given to that term by French philosopher Bernard Stiegler: their effects can be positive and negative simultaneously.
About the Presenter
Jürgen Pieters is Professor of Literature at Ghent University (Belgium), where he coordinates the international network CHARM (Consortium of Health Humanities, Arts, Reading and Medicine). He is the author of Literature and Consolation. Fictions of Comfort (Edinburgh University Press, 2021). He is currently working on a new book about the use of literary writings in contexts of care.
Zoom Link
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87915127798
About the Lapidus Living Research Community
The Lapidus Living Research Community (LLRC) meets on the first Saturday of every month via Zoom to discuss all things research, with a focus on qualitative arts-based research practices, theory and methods.
All Lapidus members are welcome, regardless of research experience. FREE AND NO TICKETS REQUIRED. Use the Zoom link above to access the event.
- Online via Zoom
- From £120.00
- 09/09/2025
Ever drafted a letter in your head you never meant to send? To yourself, your younger self, someone long gone, or not yet met? Writers have long mined this private, potent form: Baldwin, Kincaid, Plath, and plenty more.
This workshop invites you to write from the inside out. We’ll start with short readings—monologues, poems, letters from the likes of the authors mentioned below—and use them to spark our own creative responses. Funny, fierce, reflective, or raw, there’s no right tone, only your own.
Week 1: Voice & Echo – Where our thoughts circle and split (Woolf, Rankine)
Week 2: Letters Never Sent – Honest, unsent missives to self and others (Baldwin, Plath)
Week 3: Soliloquy & Confession – Unfiltered speech and theatrical turns (Shakespeare, Browning)
Week 4: The Inner Chorus – Who else is in there, and what do they want? (Didion, Vuong, Davis)
Come write. No critique. Just good company, good writing time, and possibly some surprising revelations.
- Online via Zoom
- From £60.00
- 13/09/2025
Writing For Wellbeing & Activism – A 2-day event
Writing has the power to uncover, heal, and transform. As we write, we shape our world and ourselves.
Inspired by this belief, Lapidus International invites you to participate in a two-day conference that explores the intersections of writing, wellbeing, and activism. This conference is an opportunity for academics, practitioners, writers, and activists from around the world to share knowledge and engage in dialogue on the role of writing in personal healing and social transformation.
This gathering aims to bring together participants from various disciplines to investigate how writing for wellbeing can also serve as a vehicle for activism. We welcome diverse perspectives that examine writing as a method of supporting mental health, fostering resilience, and creating social change.
To find out more and book tickets please click here.
- Online via Zoom
- From £225.00
- 16/09/2025
Harnessing creativity to deliver rich, enjoyable and meaningful evaluation.
Tuesday 16th September, 23rd September and 30th September 2025, from 10am – 12.30pm.
Are you frustrated with traditional evaluation methods?
Do you feel your evaluation tools don’t reflect the creative nature of your work?
Are you finding it hard to engage participants in evaluation?
Do you get poor response rates from questionnaires?
Over the course of three interactive workshops, we will look at ways in which we can better harness creativity to generate appropriate, relevant, meaningful evaluations.
You will discover how to evaluate in ways that are enjoyable and rewarding for participants; that generate improved response rates; and deliver richer and more meaningful data.
Working collaboratively, we will co-produce creative solutions to real-world scenarios. Sharing ideas and practice, we will explore ways in which creativity can reinvigorate existing evaluation methods including questionnaires, focus groups, feedback and monitoring.
The full cost is £225 for three workshops and all handouts.
A £75 discount is available for freelancers and self-funding individuals. Please email support@janewillis.co.uk for a coupon code.
- Monte da Japonica, Alentejo, Portugal
- From £495.00
- 01/10/2025
We are all born with a wild imagination. It is through this unlimited creative resource that we can access the unconscious, connect with our intuition, develop a greater degree of self-awareness and expand our sense of possibility. Fire Your Wild Imagination will be a chance to explore this vast inner superpower through a holistic practice underpinned by Jungian psychology, creative writing and journaling designed to facilitate creativity, foster self-discovery & facilitate transformative growth with the gentle guidance of Dr Rachel.
Fire Your Wild Imagination will include daily depth writing workshops focused on cultivating creativity through attuning to your curious inner child, your wise inner sage and the wisdom of nature. The retreat will take place at the rustic and charming historic family home of Monte da Japonica and its surrounding cork woods.
The retreat is for writers, creative & therapeutic practitioners, seekers, inner explorers and those on a journey of self-discovery who are curious about how writing & imagination can be used to support transformative growth and would like to dive deeper. The focus of the retreat will be on process, rather than outcome, and on what comes up in the writing, rather than craft and you’ll be invited to work with the material at a level that feels right for you. For those who have a writing or other creative practice, depth-writing can be used as an adjacent activity to support, deepen and expand your projects. Wherever you are at, this retreat is a chance to fire the creative, healing superpower of the wild imagination that courses through all of us.
Cost: single & shared rooms from £495 (For individual room costs, send me an email)
Deposit: £125
About Rachel
Rachel Newsome, PhD, is an independent writer, teacher and creative guide with twenty years of experience as a former lecturer in Higher Education. She holds a Jungian arts-based doctorate in Creative Writing and delivers a programme of depth writing offerings aimed at supporting transformational growth in others. She is Co-Editor of forthcoming Routledge publication ‘The Creative Psyche: Between Matter & Spirit’ and is regular speaker for the UK public education platform Seed Talks. She is author of Depth Writing with Dr Rachel on Substack and serves on the London Arts-Based Research Centre editorial team.
- Online via Zoom
- From £120.00
- 07/10/2025
We all have them—that inner murmur, mutter, monologue. Sometimes it’s wise, sometimes it’s way off. Literature is full of these inner voices, from Woolf’s fluid consciousness to Shakespeare’s solitary speakers to Baldwin’s unposted letters.
In this writing series, we tune in. Each week, we’ll read a short, vivid piece—monologue, letter, poem or fragment from the likes of the authors mentioned below—and use it as a spark for our own creative writing. Expect wordplay, unexpected turns, and the occasional flash of insight.
Week 1: Voice and Echo – Fragments, contradictions, layered selves (Woolf, Beckett, Rankine)
Week 2: Letters Never Sent – Writing to the past self, the future self, the imagined other (Baldwin, Kincaid)
Week 3: Soliloquy & Confession – Talking out loud when no one’s supposed to hear (Shakespeare, Browning, Carson)
Week 4: The Inner Chorus – Giving shape to the internal tug-of-war (Didion, Vuong, Davis)
No critique, no need to share—unless you want to. Just bring a pen, a curious mind, and your self.
- Various UK locations
- From £5444.00.00
- 11/05/2026
This excursion-retreat weaves together the inspirational power of strikingly beautiful locations with literary pilgrimage, lively literary discussions, and expressive writing for wellbeing.
During this 12-day UK adventure, participants will be invited to respond to stirring poems and prose pieces of English, Welsh and Scottish authors within sites associated with their life and creative work. In this program, we will travel through varied landscapes, savor restful stays in delightfully scenic surroundings, and visit historically significant places within the Cotswolds, southeast Wales, Liverpool, the Lake District, and Edinburgh. As we savor the charms and literary vibe of these places, we will enjoy numerous opportunities to amplify our sensory perceptions, experience playful creativity, gather rejuvenating memories, and gain personal insight, as we respond to stimulating writing prompts.
Registration for this trip is now open, and the final date to pay your deposit and register is December 5, 2025, but you are encouraged to register as soon as possible to hold your place in the tour. Contact Geri Chavis at ggchavis@stkate.edu to receive a detailed brochure and for answers to any questions you have. Arrangements for this trip are made by Sovereign Tourism, based in London.
Program Leadership by Geri Chavis, Founder/Convener of MN Poetry Therapy Network, Professor Emerita, St. Catherine University