Online Writing Course

Your Health and Care Experience: Writing What’s Within | Writing Our Health and Care Stories | Workshop One

Online // 

27th April
2-4pm (UK Time)

Writing about illness we experience, the care we give, or being disabled by society, can bring its own health benefits. This supportive set of live online workshops provides you with a platform to express your individual story. Write without shame – or because of it. It’s your turn to have your voice heard.

We will begin by looking inward, considering our individual experience, and what about it we might hope to express or share. We will consider our experiences of health and care as platforms for storytelling, asking ourselves, ‘what is the story we might wish to write?’ and ‘how might we tell these stories?’ 

Reading samples will provide us with impetus for new writing. We’ll consider works rooted in somatic storytelling, writing from a felt sense of our bodies and what our bodies might be telling us. We will also step back to reflect – ‘why write about health and illness at all?’ Learn the proven benefits to our own health and wellbeing when we write in an expressive or therapeutic way.

Course outline

  • A two-hour live zoom workshop with writer and coach, Andrew Kaye Kauffmann, including a combination of reading, discussion and writing exercises
  • Reading material provided outside of the Zoom session
  • Resources on telling your story within safe boundaries
  • Content rooted in the social model of disability, open to people with health and care needs, and those who provide care

Paced to be a comfortable writing experience, suited to writers of all levels. There will be a short comfort break. There is no expectation to be on camera, if you don’t feel comfortable appearing on camera.

Series of Workshops

This is the first worksop in a series of three Live Online events. They are designed to work as a series, with a successive series of writing exercises to engage with to help develop your story. All ticket types can be found here:

Combination Ticket: Having our voice heard: writing our health and care stories| £75 | All Three Workshops Listed Below

Workshop 1: Your health and care experience: writing what´s within| £30 | Saturday 27th April | 2pm – 4pm, UK Time GMT / UTC

Workshop 2: Finding the right language: health and illness as metaphors| £30 |Saturday 11th May| 2pm – 4pm, UK Time GMT / UTC

Workshop 3: Lay bare the experience? Choosing your perspective on writing a challenging story| £30 | Saturday 25th May | 2pm – 4pm, UK Time BST / UTC+

Learning online

These workshops will take place on Zoom, so you will need to have access to the internet at the times given above. The course tutor will share Zoom links for each session via email.

Discounted Spots

If you would like to purchase tickets for these events individually, each event has four half price places and two free place available on a first come first served basis. Please email ennis@londonlitlab.co.uk to let us know if you would like one of these spots. Please note, you can only have one discounted place across all three events.

Course dates

27th April
2-4pm (UK Time)

Course location

This is an online course

Cost

£30.00

Half-price place

If you would like to purchase tickets for these events individually, each event has four half price places and two free place available on a first come first served basis. Please email ennis@londonlitlab.co.uk to let us know if you would like one of these spots. Please note, you can only have one discounted place across all three events.

Further Info

These workshops will run with a minimum of 8 and a maximum of 40 participants. Any questions at all, please drop us a line at info@londonlitlab.co.uk and we’ll be happy to help!

About the tutor

Andrew Kaye Kauffmann is a coach, a writer and a teacher of creative writing. The Centre for Mental Health’s 2023-24 Writer in Residence, he has lived with a mental health condition for over 20 years. For fifteen years a campaigner for health and care charities such as Age UK, Macmillan Cancer Support and Royal National Institute of Blind People, today he writes on topics such as mental health, being a kidney donor, and being a carer. He has completed a CPD-accredited introduction to Therapeutic and Reflective Writing with The Professional Writing Academy, and works with narrative tools to help his coaching clients cope with life transitions. He’s facilitated courses for The Literary Consultancy, Out on the Page and The Write Salon on writing from life and writing challenging material. Shortlisted in 2022 for The Literary Consultancy’s Pen Factor award, his writing was also recognised when he was a winner of the 2021 Spread the Word and Scribe UK competition for works of narrative non-fiction. A freelance journalist, his articles have been published by HuffPost UK, most recently a piece on the MPox virus and how it affected physical and mental health in the LGBTQ+ community.

https://linktr.ee/andrewkkauffmann

www.andrewkauffmann.co.uk

Your Health and Care Experience: Writing What’s Within | Writing Our Health and Care Stories | Workshop One