Our recent projects

This project was undertaken with the Wee Refuge in Glasgow, a safe haven for women who have experienced domestic abuse.  The project was very successful with the participants creating a booklet of their writing.  This included poetry, journaling, some memoir work and a short story written collaboratively.  The participants reported feeling greater confidence and a sense of freedom and community cohesion.

 

This project was developed by one of our bibliotherapists who created this programme in 2007, and ran it from 2007 to 2009 with Midlothian Women's Aid and Dundee University, and later with Edinburgh Women's Aid.  We hope to run a Getting it Write for Every Child project with the children at the refuge in 2025. The staff at the refuge have asked if we can run a similar event for the women again, later this year.

This project took place at a nursing home for adults with dementia in Glasgow.  

The facilitator read poems to the participants and they discussed the meanings and feelings that arose.  The participants then suggested words and sentences that were put together into a poem, describing the fears, frustrations and worries of living with dementia.  This was very challenging for some participants but the workshop was done over a couple of hours with breaks and chatting, so that everyone was calm and the atmosphere was friendly and collaborative.  The group then went on to create another word story of some of the funny and strange things that had happened to them.   This ended the session on a light hearted note as the facilitator read back the word poem.  The residents of the home reported feeling happy to have had the opportunity to take part and feel understood.

Other nursing homes have expressed an interest in running this project. 

This group included a cross section of the local community and was therefore intergenerational and multi-cultural. 

Some poems and books were chosen by the group and read together, and at home, over the ten weeks of the term.  

The group discussed the issues raised which included age-ism in society, the ongoing issues of childcare and families living far away from wider family support and the real problem of loneliness that faces so many people of all ages these days.  

The participants reported feeling much more understanding and empathetic to others within their community afterwards, and of feeling a real connection to those in the group. The participants also reported feeling more understood and less alone after the sessions ended.

The group ended the term with a tea and poetry reading party!  Some members of this group went on to form a Book Club & continue to meet regularly just for the joy of reading together.