Drifting space: a poetry workshop
Mon 29 Apr 2024 6:00 PM - 7:30 PM BST
Online, Zoom
Drifting space: a poetry workshop
Mon 29 Apr 2024 6:00 PM - 7:30 PM BST
Online, Zoom
Description
Please note: These sessions are for people with experience of self-harm only - whether historical or ongoing. You get to decide whether or not you feel you have experience of self-harm; it is not our place to decide.
About the session
In this workshop, we’ll be exploring different ways of being drawn to, through, and by the places and spaces that surround us. This workshop is a chance to speak to the spaces and places that we are pulled to and provoked by. We’ll be exploring how poetry and writing more broadly might respond to how we move in the world around us – both the physical world that we can see and touch and the emotional or online worlds that exist in our hearts, our minds, and our devices! As people who have self-harmed, we’ll consider what our surroundings might mean to us and how our poetry can express those intangible connections. We’ll be letting go of directions about how to move in a given space, of feelings of ‘should’ and ‘ought’ and releasing ourselves from the pressure to make progress and be productive. We’ll ignore false ideas of skill or training, and prioritise what words can do for us, and how our writing can feel joyous, caring, and meaningful. This workshop will involve responding to prompts in whichever way feels most comfortable and significant in that moment, in any way that might mean.
This workshop will be facilitated by Cat (they/them). Cat is a poet and publisher who loves thinking about unusual ways of using words and what words can do for us. Their debut collection 712 stanza homes for the sun was published in 2023 by Broken Sleep Books with their most recent collection Dear Lettera 32 being recently published by Permeable Barrier. They're @marbledmayhem on Twitter, Instagram, and BlueSky.
For this workshop, you will need:
- Pen or pencil
- Something to write on
- A laptop/tablet if you'd rather type than write
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Arts and Ourselves: Creative responses to self-harm
Arts and Ourselves is a series of creative sessions led by and for people with experience of self-harm. It is run by Make Space in collaboration with excellent creatives and facilitators. The programme offers room for our experiences in their multiple forms; a space for us to be together and to make some things.
At no point will you be asked or encouraged to discuss or creatively represent your experience of self-harm, however you will be welcome to.
Our aim is to give room for self-harm all of its different meanings; you might want to explore shame, feel into joy, forget about self-harm entirely, or hear from others. Whatever you need, we hope you feel welcome. Each session will focus on a particular creative medium - the extent to which you make this about your experiences of self-harm is up to you.
Logistics and access
Each session is free to attend and will be held online on Zoom. Our programme is supported by a therapist who will be available to anyone who needs space to debrief after the sessions.
We also have a small budget to send you appropriate materials for each session; this will depend on sign ups and the content of each session.
Each session will be automatically captioned as default. There is space on the sign up form to let us know about any other access needs you have such as live closed captioning, BSL, or an intro to the team before the session. We will do our best to meet these needs.
Expectations
Make Space rejects cessation based responses to self-harm. We will never ask or suggest that you stop self-harming. We recognise that self-harm can take many forms and play many different roles in people's lives. We do not require you to disclose anything about your self-harm.
We are an organisation led by people with experience of self-harm. We are not trained medical professionals and cannot offer medical advice or assistance.
Outcomes
At the end of the programme we’d like to make a Zine (similar to one we made before; A Space for Self-Harm). The zine will work as an exhibition of the work we made together. Details of how to submit your makings will be sent after each workshop.
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Get in touch
If you have any questions about the programme or would like to speak to the team before attending, please feel free to get in touch at info@makespaceco.org
Funding
This project is funded by The National Lottery Community Fund.