The project aims to establish a network of individuals who are interested in the development of poetry as a therapeutic medium. It's comprised of academics, poets, mental health practitioners and service users. 

The network develops and delivers poetry workshops, supporting individuals to express their narratives through poetry. Together, we seek to offer the opportunity for poetic practice to groups who are potentially excluded from accessing creative opportunities, such as those with mental health problems or learning disabilities.

Lead: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 

Clinical Lead: Anne Holloway

Aims:

1. Develop a self-sustaining network of academics, poets, researchers and service users interested in the therapeutic use of poetry. The focus of the network will be to develop the use of poetry as a therapeutic activity with a focus on creative practice and research.

2. Develop and deliver a series of poetry workshops, focusing on supporting participants to develop their own individual and shared narratives of recovery or discovery. These workshops will initially be based on the successfully piloted ‘surviving by storytelling’ model delivered at IMH in 2018. We will develop the workshops further as the project evolves.

3. The network will aim to use the experience of delivering workshops to develop a ‘tool kit’ for those wishing to lead workshops within their own communities. 

Surviving by Storytelling II

Continuing our work with poets working in the community, this phase of our project will seek to develop a network of poets who are facilitating workshops or working in relation to mental health across a variety of contexts. This network will have two initial focuses: to establish the impact of delivering these workshops on the poets themselves and provide a space for debrief and peer support and to work together to produce a set of guidelines, or a toolkit for supporting delivery of poetry workshops in relation to mental health. We’ll be working with individual poets, external organisations and poets with lived experience of managing their mental health.

In year one we plan a series of online and in-person conversations around the challenges around facilitating poetry workshops for freelance practitioners. These conversations will be documented as a resource with a view to developing a support network of practitioners and pathways to mental health practitioners who can provide support and guidance.