Nominations open for the Lapidus Creative Bridges Awards 2025

In our latest blog post, Kathryn Koromilas introduces our new Creative Bridges Awards and invites your nominations of the writers, facilitators, researchers, therapists, and visionaries working at the intersection of words and wellbeing.

Introducing the Lapidus Creative Bridges Awards 2025

At Lapidus International, we celebrate words and writing. We celebrate the enduring power of words for healing, change and community. We celebrate the writers, poets, health workers, counsellors, therapists, teachers, researchers and everyone who gathers with us and who is passionate about the use of words, written or spoken, to promote good wellbeing and mental health.

Our celebrations are often quiet ones. We gather, we share our writing and research, we write and reflect together, we attend and support our member practitioner workshops. 

This year, we are adding a flourish to our quiet celebrations through our inaugural awards.

We are proud to introduce the Lapidus Creative Bridges Awards, a new initiative to celebrate the writers, researchers, facilitators and visionaries working at the intersection of words and wellbeing. With these awards, we want to acknowledge, elevate and celebrate the diverse and often quiet ways this work shows up in our field.

These awards will be conferred upon key people in our field, who you will have nominated, at the close of our annual conference, Creative Bridges 2025, to be held online on Saturday 13th and Sunday 14th September 2025. 

Lapidus Creative Bridges Award Categories

We will present the following awards:

The ‘Impactful Creative Voice Award’ will recognise an individual whose creative writing resonates deeply in the context of wellbeing, healing or social change. The recipient may be a poet, storyteller, spoken word artist or digital writer whose voice has moved others and brought about personal or social transformation. We’re looking for courage, authenticity and resonance.

The ‘Outstanding Therapeutic Writing Research Award’ will recognise a researcher, academic or practice-based, who has contributed meaningful insights to the field of writing for wellbeing. We welcome research that shows originality, rigour and real-world relevance, especially work that informs therapeutic practice, policy or pedagogy in health, counselling or education.

The ‘Diversity and Inclusion in Writing Award’ will recognise and celebrate the creative work that expands whose stories are told and who gets to tell them. It recognises inclusive practices, multilingual or cross-cultural expression and projects that empower marginalised voices. From workshop leaders to publishers to activists, we want to honour those working toward equity in the field of creative writing.

Nominations

We now invite your nominations in the above three categories. We invite you to reflect on those whose work has touched you or inspired you and whose work reaffirms Lapidus’s commitment to the healing power of words. You may nominate yourself or someone else. 

You may submit a nomination by filling in the Nomination Form. 

You’ll be asked to:

• Provide the nominee’s name and contact details
• Share a short supporting statement 
• Optionally, upload or link to a sample of their work
• Confirm that the nominee consents to being nominated

The deadline for submissions is Sunday 31st August 2025. Winners will be announced at the Creative Bridges Conference.

Lapidus Lifetime Achievement Award

We will also be presenting a special Lapidus Lifetime Achievement Award. This prestigious award will be presented to an individual who has made a sustained and outstanding contribution to the field of creative writing for wellbeing over many years. It celebrates a lifetime of dedication through practice, advocacy, research or leadership. Someone who has advanced the mission of Lapidus and inspired others in the field. The recipient will exemplify integrity, vision and a deep commitment to the healing power of words.

Why have we set up the Awards?

For years, members of our community have quietly transformed lives with a single poem, a healing workshop or an inventive piece of research. The Lapidus Creative Bridges Awards are our way of formally recognising this work in all its forms: creative, practical, academic and lived.

We hope the awards will inspire new connections, future collaborations and continued curiosity about the ways creative writing supports mental health and wellbeing.

By presenting these awards, we want to shine a light on those whose contributions deserve wider attention, and to invite us all to pause and say: We see you. We thank you.

Who will you nominate?