Welcome to Lapidus International
The Writing For Wellbeing Community
Lapidus International is a membership organisation open to everyone with an interest in writing for wellbeing.
We support and champion writing for wellbeing through development opportunities, exclusive member events, access to the latest research, and more.
We offer a supportive network to enhance both personal and professional writing practice.
What Is Writing For Wellbeing?
Writing for wellbeing is the use of words to explore thoughts, express emotions, and support personal growth. It’s not about perfect grammar or literary skill, it’s about connecting with yourself through journalling, poetry, storytelling, or reflective writing. Whether used in a group setting or privately, writing can be a powerful tool to process experiences, build resilience, and find clarity. At Lapidus, we celebrate writing in all its forms as a gentle, creative way to nurture emotional, mental, and social wellbeing.
Upcoming Events
Moving Poems: making poetry films as a creative wellbeing practice
This presentation introduces poetry film as an expanded writing-for-wellbeing practice. Blending spoken word, moving image, sound and visual metaphor, poetry film offers a powerful methodology for meaning-making, emotional processing and reclaiming voice during times of transition. By bringing together text, image and sound, poetry film becomes more than an art form: it becomes a relational and restorative practice for navigating change.
My current poetry film work explores lived experiences of menopause and considers the poetry film form as a space for emotional processing and catharsis. Through the lens of narrative medicine, I will explore my developing creative journey in working with this form, shaping lived experience into poetic language and finding sensory responses through images and sounds.
I will consider how the poetry film form spans the personal and the public and how the very personal act of creating a poetry film can function as a creative mediated confession, whilst creating a gentle distance from difficult material through metaphor and image. I’ll also suggest how watching the outputs of poetry film can be seen as a reflective act.
The session also invites you to experiment with short writing prompts and simple visual thinking exercises, discovering how metaphor, aesthetic distance and sensory awareness can create safe yet transformative ways to engage with our lived experiences.
About Helen Foster
I am a community-engaged writer, researcher, writing for wellbeing practitioner and poetry-film-maker. I am currently a Creative Writing Associate at the Centre for Empathic Healthcare at the University of Leicester Medical School where I am working on a poetry film project about menopause.
I have been fortunate to work with a range of creative organisations and community agencies, including Writing East Midlands, Shine Lincolnshire and Old Bird Theatre Company, designing and delivering writing for wellbeing programmes for diverse audiences, including carers, people living with mental health challenges, people experiencing isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic and women living without children. I am a writer in residence for CILIP, the Chartered Institute for Librarians and Information Professionals.
I hold a PhD in Creative Writing and my latest co-authored book, Arts for Health: Creative Writing, is out now with Emerald Press.
Join the event
Join Zoom Meeting: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84489829568
Meeting ID: 844 8982 9568
This event will be recorded. The recording will be available for a limited time after the live event. Please allow a couple of working days for us to process and upload the recording after the live event.
For questions before or after the day of the event, please contact Flo on membership@lapidus.org.uk (responses on Tuesdays and Fridays). For queries on the day of the event, please contact mel@write4word.org.
About the Lapidus Living Research Community
The Lapidus Living Research Community (LLRC) meets on the first Saturday of every month via Zoom to discuss all things research, with a focus on qualitative arts-based research practices, theory and methods.
All Lapidus members are welcome, regardless of research experience. LLRC events are free. Use the Zoom link above to access the event.
If your body could speak, what would it say? Have you ever had a conversation with it on the page?
In this 2-hour workshop, we’ll explore ways to connect with our bodies and hear their voices through writing. Kate will also share learnings from her MSc research on mind-body writing and reflections on how the research still shapes her life all these years later.
As part of the workshop:
– We’ll explore activities to help us connect with our bodies through writing
– We’ll take some time for relaxation and reflection
– Kate will share her research findings, their impact and additional learnings 10 years on
You can find out more and book here: https://www.katemcbarron.co.uk/conversations-with-our-bodies/
Feeling the gap between the compassion you offer others and what you extend to yourself?
This small group course explores self-compassion through embodied practices, two-pen dialogue, and gentle inquiry – without forcing transformation or requiring you to “fix” yourself.
Over four weeks, we’ll: ✨ Work with the inner critic with curiosity, not combat ✨ Cultivate lovingkindness towards different parts of ourselves ✨ Practice holding boundaries alongside connection ✨ Develop sustainable practices for ongoing self-nurture.
This is an invitation to softness without collapse, self-nurture that isn’t escapism.
Two spaces recently became available.
When: Thursdays, 1.30–3pm GMT
Dates: 19th February, 26th February, 5th March, 13th March 2026
Where: Zoom (link provided day before)
Investment: £175
Concession Price: 159 concessions (email Kate direct for concessions booking link): katepoll@gmail.com
Full course outline available here: https://www.katepoll.co.uk/#compassionjournalling
Writing for Wellbeing Workshop for women in the beautiful setting of Scampston Walled Garden. The theme is Nostalgia: Past and Present. No prior experience needed, just bring along a notebook and pen.
Workshops held monthly.
Punctual start at 11 am, finishing at 12:30 pm. Arrive 15 minutes before for tea and coffee (provided). Ticket cost is £15 to charity.
This is a five week online course starting Tuesday 14th April, 7-9pm. £175 Bursaries available. Please inquire.
This course will look at poems from poets (or their families) who have been displaced from their homeland, and exploring and experiencing the new insights and beautiful alchemy these poems work on us.
Each session will look at two poets, and time will be given to feel deeper into the poems with all our senses, and time to write your own response to the poem, and a chance to share it in a supportive community of writers. These writers of multi-ethnic and multi-lingual backgrounds fresh insights and portals into deeper perspectives on ourselves and our lives.
Led by Poet, Poetry Healing Practitioner, Focusing Teacher, Bethany Rivers (M.A.). She is mixed race and neurodivergent. She has two poetry chapbooks published with Indigo Dreams (Off the wall), and Fly on the Wall Press (the sea refuses no river). She is author of Fountain of Creativity: Ways to nourish your writing from Victorina Press, and has been teaching creative writing and writing for wellbeing for 20 years.
Photo is of Lorenzo Quinn’s sculpture Building Bridges.
Do you have a longing for feeling at peace with who you are, right here and now?
The only problem is, you have no idea of how to shut up the inner critic that lives inside you mind!
You know, the one that keeps telling you you’re not enough, you didn’t do enough, or that you’re just too much or too little of this and that…
We all have different stories on repeat from the inner critic, but we all share the experience of knowing how it feels to be judged by our own mind.
In this poetry and writing therapy workshop, we’ll work on:
-Exploring the unique ways your inner critic shows up in your life.
-Soften its voice through the gentle power of creative expression.
-Re-write your relationship with your inner critic, moving from self-judgment toward self-compassion.
It’s the workshop to join for you who want to befriend your inner voice!
This workshop is a collaboration between Hanna Svendsen from Writing Therapy Center (https://writingtherapycenter.com/) & Maria Ortega Garcia – transdisciplinary poetry therapy practitioner and educator (https://mariaortegagarcia.com)
You’ll get a Google Meet link to your inbox directly after signing up, so you can easily see the right time for the meeting, regardless of your time zone.
It’s a live workshop that will not be recorded, so you need to attend it at the scheduled time.
Join Lapidus International...
…from as little as £3.50 per month.
As a Lapidus Member, you are part of a supportive, international writing for wellbeing community who believe in the power of using words to enhance and transform.
You’ll receive a monthly newsletter, get discounts on events and training, have access to our online library of Lapidus journals and more. All for as little as £3.50 per month!
Lapidus News
Our latest members’ survey is now open for your feedback!
Our vision
In these times of global upheaval, where words can be debased, Lapidus International will not compromise.
We know that writing endures as a way to express suffering and joy, healing and belonging in the intersection of personal circumstances and social conditions.
Through practice, research, publishing, and partnerships, we recognise words and writing as an accessible force for wellbeing, activism and therapy.
Our membership reflects the voices of all communities, including those who have been discounted, prohibited, displaced and under-served.