Welcome to Lapidus International
The Words and Writing For Wellbeing Community
Lapidus International is a membership organisation open to everyone with an interest in words for wellbeing.
We support and champion words and 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 wellbeing practice.
What Is Words and Writing For Wellbeing?
Words and 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. Find out more in our handy guide to writing for wellbeing.
Upcoming Events
As Lapidus marks its 30th anniversary, this special Summer Festival event invites us to pause, look back, and imagine what might come next.
Over the past three decades, writing for wellbeing has grown and developed in many different directions. What began as a field shaped by pioneering practitioners, writers, researchers and community projects has become an increasingly recognised approach to supporting wellbeing, connection, reflection and change.
In this interactive session, we will bring together voices from across the Lapidus community to reflect on where the field has come from, what has shaped its development, and where it might be heading next.
Through conversation, reflective writing and shared discussion, we will explore:
- What can we learn from the past 30 years of writing for wellbeing?
- How has the field evolved, and what have we discovered along the way?
- What might writing for wellbeing look like in the future?
- What possibilities, challenges and opportunities lie ahead?
- What do we want to carry forward, and what might we need to reimagine?
The session will begin with a gentle landing exercise inviting participants to reflect on their own experiences of the past. A panel conversation will then explore the development of writing for wellbeing over the last three decades, before we turn our attention towards the future.
There will be opportunities for solo writing, small-group reflection and optional sharing. Together, we will gather thoughts and hopes for the future, contributing to a shared poem that will be created during the session and read aloud as part of the event.
The event will also include an announcement about the Plumb Lines project, followed by an optional networking opportunity.
Whether you have been part of the writing for wellbeing community for many years, are discovering the field for the first time, or simply want to take some time to reflect and dream alongside others, you are very welcome.
No previous writing experience is required. You are welcome to write, reflect, listen, share, or simply be part of the conversation in whatever way feels right for you.
Join the event
Saturday 19 September
13:00–16:00
This event is FREE to Lapidus members. A Zoom link will be shared in advance of the event.
Non-members can purchase a ticket to join the event >>>
Please note that this event will be recorded.
For questions about the event, please contact Flo on membership@lapidus.org.uk.
Timetable
Timings are approximate. An updated timetable will be shared before the day.
- 1:00 pm, event opens, welcome and landing activity
- 1:20 pm, panel discussion
- 2:00 pm, break and solo writing time
- 2:20 pm, networking and sharing reflections
- 3:20 pm, Plumb Lines project launch, networking
- 3:45 pm, shared poem
- 4:00 pm, event closes
Please note: optional breaks can be taken during the networking sessions.
About our contributors
Peter Emelone, host
With over two decades of dedicated service in the field of education, Peter brings a wealth of knowledge, passion, and dedication to the board of Lapidus International. Previously Director of Studies and currently serving as a Consultant Lecturer for Learning and Teaching at Global Banking School, he is a passionate advocate for transformative teaching practices. As an ambassador for the Chartered Management Institute (CMI), Peter actively promoted the importance of management and leadership skills in education. He also advocated for the integration of these essential skills into the curriculum. He is a self-proclaimed pioneer of positivity, and his philosophy centres around creating an inclusive and supportive learning environment where everyone feels valued and empowered to achieve their fullest potential. Peter is on a mission to change lives through education by fostering a culture of positivity, inclusivity, and continuous improvement.
Mel Perry, panel chair
Mel is Chair of Lapidus International, and a poet, spoken word performer and writing practitioner from Wales, with a background in public health, and substance misuse related training and service management. She completed her MSc CWTP in 2019 following her research project which explored the experience of women survivors of domestic abuse reading their creative writing at a spoken word poetry event. Since retiring from Public Health Wales in October 2018, Mel has dedicated her time to developing her current role. Mel is published in Nation Cymru, 2024; LIRIC Journal Vol 2 Issue 2; Spoken Word in the UK, Routledge, 2021, Write a line. Inspiration book for children & young people. Kultivera 2021, and poetry anthologies. Her third poetry collection will be a response to the life and influence of her maternal grandmother. She is passionate about helping people find their seed of creativity to promote health and wellbeing, and social activism across a range of issues.
Dr Buki Akilapa, panel contributor
Dr Buki Akilapa is Deputy Editor of the LIRIC Journal and a Lecturer in Healthcare Management at Global Banking School (GBS), UK. She holds a Doctor of Education (EdD) from Canterbury Christ Church University, is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA). Buki’s research and writing interests include autoethnography, reflective writing, identity, belonging, migration, recognition, and Creative Writing for Therapeutic Purposes. Her recent LIRIC article, Journey of Reflection: Girlhood, Migration, Grief, and Healing Through Soul Work, explores how journalling, poetry, and compassionate rereading can support self-understanding and transformation. Drawing on both personal and professional experience, Buki is passionate about creating reflective spaces where stories can be explored, voices can be heard, and writing can become a pathway to recognition, learning, and healing.
Dr Claire Williamson, panel contributor
Dr Claire Williamson has been facilitating therapeutic writing for over twenty-five years, and was Director of Studies for the MSc in Creative Writing for Therapeutic Purposes at Metanoia Institute for ten years. Claire continues to provide workshops, mentoring and supervision for individuals and groups. Her doctorate explored responses to grief narratives in literature. Claire has published four poetry collections, the latest is Visiting the Minotaur (Seren). She also writes words for community opera and has worked extensively for Welsh National Opera; Bridge – celebrating the first Severn crossing is being performed this autumn in Bristol.
Dr Lucy Windridge-Floris, panel contributor
Dr Lucy Windridge-Floris is a writer, educator and creative writing practitioner with more than thirty years’ experience across education, healthcare and community settings. A former university programme director in English and Creative Writing, she holds a PhD in Creative Writing and Critical Practice and an MSc in Creative Writing for Therapeutic Purposes. Lucy is the founder of Writing Sense, an initiative exploring how creative writing, narrative practice and autoethnography can help us understand experiences shaped by separation and institutional life. Her work is rooted in the belief that writing for wellbeing is not only a personal or therapeutic practice but can also make visible the systems and inherited narratives that shape our lives. She is particularly interested in the discipline’s potential to foster connection, challenge dominant stories and contribute to meaningful social change: https://www.writingsense.net/
Georgiana Blake-Hall, poet
[Details to follow]
This session offers a space for discussion and exploration of what encourages or stops people from contributing their own knowledge to the developing field of writing and words for wellbeing by sharing their work through publication.
LLRC is a community of Lapidus members who share an interest in research. Many of you will have undertaken research or created dissertations as part of your master’s or doctoral degree; most of you will have experienced that creative process as life-changing, and powerfully transformative. Yet many of those valuable pieces of work that have taken huge chunks of your life to complete are still resting on your shelves at home or maybe in the library at your place of learning, hidden from view, unshared but probably never forgotten.
This session is an opportunity to explore the reasons why that might be the case. I have heard some people say that although the work was good enough to earn a degree, they don’t think it’s good enough to publish; I have heard other people say they wouldn’t know how to do that; some people say it was too long ago. But I wonder???
I believe we owe it to ourselves, and to our participants (if involved), and to our field, to share our learning and maybe take it a step further. We don’t publish dissertations. This session addresses how to use the knowledge gained from your research to create a journal article.
Maybe you have moved on in your thinking, maybe there have been new questions to address that have arisen from that work; or maybe you feel you would do it differently now. And maybe you have followed it through and done something differently? Whatever, we want to help you take that next step.
About Kim Etherington
Kim Etherington is a member of the LIRIC journal editorial board. Writing has always been an important personal resource that she has integrated into her life and her work as a therapist and as a Professor of Narrative and Life Story Research. She has published several books and many journal papers and is currently writing a memoir.
Details at: https://kim.etherington.com
Join the meeting
Join the Zoom meeting: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86248785198?pwd=0rXU7bmbOZijsocRCrZeLqlBX8WRKm.1
Meeting ID: 862 4878 5198
Passcode: 702994
Please note that 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 and no tickets are required. Use the Zoom link above to access the event.
Creative Writing for Well Being Workshops at Saltaire Music & Arts Festival. Booking information & details below. Free Festival & Creative Writing for Well Being Workshops!
Creative Writing for Well Being Workshops 11am and 3pm. Situated in the main festival, in Robert’s Park, Saltaire, Bradford, West Yorkshire
Creative Hearts & Minds – Creative Writing for Wellbeing Workshop
A Writing for Wellbeing Workshop for women on the theme of Colour – Into the Blue. Held in the beautiful surroundings of Scampston Hall Walled Garden in North Yorkshire. Proceeds are donated to various charities, including Survival and Womankind Worldwide. Booking essential.
THE SEEKER:
The Seeker archetype in midlife represents a profound psychological transition from caring for others to a journey of self-discovery. Women step away from external expectations to explore their own identity, spiritual growth, and deeper truth, treating midlife not as a decline, but as a purposeful personal rebirth. Session 1 of 6 in the Lead & Care series on midlife, menopause, and the archetypes that carry us through it.
LEAD & CARE: THE ARCHETYPAL MIDLIFE
There are whales who stop breeding decades before they die, and it’s exactly then that they become indispensable. Orca and whale matriarchs lead their pods long after their last calf: they remember where to find food in a lean year, guide the group, and keep the whole family line alive. Biologists call it the grandmother effect. Maybe it’s just what wisdom looks like once it stops apologising for itself.
Lead & Care is a poetry therapy journey that asks what it would mean to meet menopause and midlife the way the only other mammals who go through menopause do: not as a weakness/illness to be managed, but as a powerful role to step into. Across six Sundays we’ll sit with six archetypes that can guide women through this passage: the Seeker, the Rebel, the Healer, the Creator, the Wise Woman, the Wild Woman. Each one is a different shape that leading takes, and a different shape that caring takes for ourselves, for each other, for who comes after us.
Through poems, images, and guided writing, each session lets us recognise the different faces already living in us. A short companion booklet arrives each Monday to help you arrive already listening to yourself. Join the full journey, or step into whichever archetypes call to you. Join us every Sunday (from the 8th November to the 13th December) or choose the archetype(s) you are most interested in exploring.
It’s an invitation to rewrite the story we inherited about this phase of life, and to claim it, at last, as the one we were heading toward all along.
Purchase your ticket here: https://buy.stripe.com/aFacN46ie1f284kdzaenS0d
This 12 session (over 6 months) therapeutic writing group is for personal development. Claire will be offering a range of techniques to connect to your creative potential. There will be a therapeutic (rather than a literary) lens. Writing will be individual, with sharing in groups. We will build a non-judgemental and empathic container for your thoughts and feelings.
Join Lapidus International...
…from as little as £3.50 per month.
As a Lapidus Member, you are part of a supportive, international 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 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.