- Event Date: 13/09/2025
Creative Bridges 2025
Event Details
- 12:00
- Online via Zoom
- From £60
Event Description
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.
Other events you may like
Start the weekend off right with a relaxing evening of Indian classical music and reflective writing.
Bring a mat, blanket, pen and paper. There will also be chairs for those who prefer to sit.
There is a lift and wheelchair-accessible toilets downstairs.
There is wheelchair access through the main entrance of the church.
The main entrace is on Alma Vale Road.
Please contact us if you have accessibility needs and we will work with you to ensure your needs are met.
- Lapidus Member Event Only
Compassion Journalling: Writing as a Practice of Self-Compassion and Resilience
Presenter: Kate Poll
Saturday 4th October 4:00pm.
Developed during an MSc exploring intrapersonal communication and the conditions that support emotional resilience, Compassion Journalling is a reflective writing practice that evolved in response to lived experience of Functional Neurological Disorder (FND) and a guiding question: if relational dynamics are central to wellbeing, what happens when we apply those insights to our relationship with self? After all, it’s the one we carry for life.
The practice emerged from research reimagining Gottman’s Four Horsemen metaphor through an intrapersonal lens — exploring how patterns of self-talk, nervous system response, and self-defeating storying can lead to internal disconnection. A reference to writing as reflective self-therapy in a paper co-written by Professor Paul Gilbert and Dr Jeannie Wright became unexpectedly foundational, helping shape a creative, sustaining tool that has since evolved into a compassion-focused, neuroinclusive journalling approach.
Now further grounded in Compassion Focused Therapy (CFT) and Kristin Neff’s self-compassion research, alongside Internal Family Systems, narrative therapy, interpersonal neurobiology, and somatic awareness, Compassion Journalling supports emotional resilience and self-attunement. This session blends theory, guided writing, and shared reflection to offer a flexible, compassionate practice — one that supports emotional resilience, deepens self-understanding, and helps us stay present to ourselves and our work.
About the Presenter
Kate Poll is a writer, facilitator, and co-editor of the Lapidus Magazine and former Lapidus Board member, with a particular interest in reflective writing for wellbeing and inclusive creative practice. She draws on lived experience of neurodivergence, creative work, and carer experience, alongside involvement in stroke recovery projects, carers’ wellbeing groups, and independent living charities. Kate’s approach is shaped by community insights, health and care settings, and nonprofit work, with a focus on compassionate, relational ways of supporting self-expression and connection. Her work encourages honest reflection, practical tools, and small, sustainable adjustments that help creative and caring work stay both meaningful and doable.
Zoom Link
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83983584960
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.
This is a ten week online course, starting on Weds 8th October, 7 – 9.15pm looking at how the process of Focusing can be used alongside writing for wellbeing, runs through till 10th December. Those using poetry or journaling with groups and want to be inspired to use poems in new ways, and gain further insights and perspectives through the process of Focusing, a gentle and spacious process.
This will be a beautiful exploration of direct experience of how poetry and writing can be deepened through the process of Focusing, which brings more compassion and understanding into our lives.
Discounts are available, if financial circumstances are difficult, so please inquire.