Getting involved

If you are interested in joining the Leeds/Bradford group contact Anne Maney, 01937 843010, or email: annemaney@googlemail.com

We have developed a local group which encourages networking and explores all aspects of our members' interests including (but not exclusively): writing for personal development, using creative writing therapeutically with others, and training

Lapidus Leeds/Bradford at Ilkley Literature Festival

The Healing Word

Leeds/Bradford presented 'The Healing Word: Lapidus' at the Ilkley Festival on Monday 10 October, with funding from national Lapidus. This well-received event was fronted by the multi-award winning poet, playwright and fiction writer Char March, who has long and wide-ranging experience in therapeutic writing.
Char began the evening with readings from her newly-published poetry collection The Thousand Natural Shocks. Her choice focused on issues especially relevant to Lapidus - poems stimulated by her work or by events in her own life where relief from distress had been sought and found in writing. Her performance was funny and moving and fully engaged with her audience.
After Char's reading the audience took part in a short writing exercise Ð 'If your writing hand could speak...' Ð created and facilitated by Leeds/Bradford colleagues, to gain some idea of how we work. We then briefly outlined the aims and function of the national body and described how the Leeds/Bradford branch supports writers in our area. Five of us then read poems which had originated in Lapidus workshops and the presentation was brought to a close with a second writing exercise Ð 'On the other hand...' - leaving the audience, we hope, with some fresh ideas on the activity of writing.
Anne Maney
16.10.2011
See Lapidus Leeds-Bradford at Ilkley Festival

Lapidus-related events and projects

Kalasangam: Arts in Health and Disability Projects
See Kalasangam for information about this leading South Asian arts organisation with a commitment to arts for health

Previous meetings:

Reconnecting Body and Mind one-day workshop with Channa Cune

in August 2010 at Leeds Art Gallery with Channa Cune

Form and Emotion Writing Workshop with Jane Scargill , West Yorkshire Playhouse, February 2010. Can traditional verse forms - such as pantoum, Haiku or renga - help new or vulnerable writers give expression to difficult emotions? Can structure be liberating? What about older writers who are drawn to rhyme? Alternatively, do we feel more comfortable with free verse?

Forum Theatre, Leeds, October 2008 (meeting notes- Word document)
facilitated by Barry Fox with three actors from Urban Sprawl theatre company. Following principles originated by Augusto Boal, a group of thirteen interrupted an enacted scenario on a thorny issue and inserted comments which would influence the shape of the drama and allow key issues to be raised for further discussion and writing

Workshop with Char March, West Yorkshire Playhouse, February 2008. Writer in residence for Tonic, Leeds Hospitals Arts project (meeting notes - word document)

Conversations with Paintings at Cartwright Hall Art Gallery & Lister Park, Bradford, June 2007
(meeting notes- Word document)

Exploring the sense of self through a sense of place - my First Lapidus Day, February 2007 (meeting notes- Word document)

Getting Curious About the Critic, September 2006 with River Wolton, (meeting notes- Word document)

Survivors of Mental Distress, February 2006: writing and discussion with Terry Simpson, (meeting notes - Word document)

Workshop with John Fox, US National Association for Poetry Therapy, September 2005(meeting notes - Word document)

The Writer's Voice, February 2005 (meeting notes- Word document)

Inaugural Meeting, West Yorkshire Playhouse, September 2004. Writer in residence at a West Yorkshire hospice, Alex Krysinski, spoke inspiringly about her work summary by Martin Woof (Word document).