Grimm & Co is Yorkshire’s only Apothecary to the Magical. It’s an exciting project with a shop-front premises in Rotherham, offering creative writing workshops for children and young people. The first time I visited, as a potential volunteer, I was given the same experience as each new participant gets: the secret doors opened and I was ushered through into the writers’ space. I tell you, it’s magical.
Update: Visit their website to find out about their #SummerLetterChallenge. It looks really interesting! - Richard
We all love receiving a handwritten letter through the post, the feeling you get. That rush of excitement, the anticipation of ‘what’s inside?!’ - Reading well thought out words from someone close to us, offering an opportunity of reflection and even becoming a tactile keep sake for the future. Letters provide us with such a wholesome experience.
Leslie Tate’s novel, Heaven’s Rage, describes the life and loves of an emerging cross dresser in the 1970s and 1980s. His insights have been made into a well-received short film which is currently touring the UK. Here, he describes how the raised profile of trans people has affected him as a man, and a writer.
Lapidus South Yorkshire, Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire (The Hoodlums) were established in January. We applied for a small grant to enable us to put on a launch event in order to publicise the group and attract more members.
An alliance of cultural organisations from across England launches a new national body to develop and promote the role of arts and culture in supporting the country’s health and wellbeing (launch 13 March 2018).
MINDFULNESS
&
HAIKU
EXPERIENCE THE PRESENT MOMENT THROUGH THE BEAUTY OF HAIKU POETRY: A MORNING WORKSHOP
For anyone interested in developing their physical storytelling skills to build confidence and enhance emotional mental wellbeing. Workshops starting on 30 October.
I’ve journaled and made art for over 60 years now, but for many of those years I thought of it as simply a pastime.
Then one day I went down a deep, dark, rabbit hole and just by chance the writing and art changed.
The art got abstract and the writing came from the bottom of that deep, dark hole. I had no understanding of the whys or wherefores but the whole process helped me to reflect on the pain, the sadness and the angry resentments and to heal so that I could move on and pull myself up into a place of wellbeing, a place where the sun shone more often. But it never lasted and I came to understand that there was more to this and I needed to know what the more was. I thought school might have some answers so I took another BA which allowed me to enroll in a Master of Arts in Integrated Studies through Athabasca University by distance … and it is quite a distance from Southern Ontario to Central Alberta.
Accreditation in the field of literary arts in health and social care
by Dominic McLoughlin Sessional Lecturer in Counselling at Birkbeck, University of London FCE, and for the MA in Creative Writing for Personal Development at CCE, University of Sussex. 2004
This contribution to the debate on accreditation was originally sought from the Writing for Personal Development special interest group within Lapidus. This group was formed to cater for those in the membership who have an interest in the field of writing for personal development as participants rather than as practitioners, i.e. people who don’t necessarily want to run workshops for other people. Although I was one of the founder members of the group I have not consulted formally with members of the special interest group so in no way can I speak on their behalf. I do have personal experience of using writing as a way of recovering from depression, but my contribution here is mostly an exercise in imaginative thinking. I have asked myself what might the key issues be around accreditation from the ‘user’ or client perspective?