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Lapidus International

The Future of Writing for Wellbeing: A virtual chocolate cake

This year, Lapidus International turned 25 years old. I plucked an older issue of Writing in Education from my bookshelf and conveniently found myself staring at Issue number 70, published in August 2016. It contains a piece written by then coordinator Caleb Parkin, discussing Lapidus turning 20. Caleb writes about the ‘bright spring day’ when Lapidus members came out to celebrate the organisation’s 20th birthday, under a ‘cerulean sky’ in the ‘smart pillar-fronted Churchill building’ in Chester, just ‘a stone’s throw away from the river’.

25th Birthday Celebration – Far away, together

Five years later, Lapidus members came together to celebrate once again. I attended just a stone’s throw away from my washing machine. Being online, however, did nothing to dampen the spirits of both organisers and attendees. Sheelagh Gallagher, one of the hosts of the event, even brought along a chocolate cake which was waved in front of her webcam with great enthusiasm as we all ate it up eagerly with our eyes.

It was an event which celebrated just how much the writing for wellbeing community has thrived over the last 25 years and how much it has grown. We wanted it to be an opportunity for members to share their thoughts. We discussed what the community meant to us, what we want to do in the future, what we have learnt and what we want to learn.

Members told us what they had been up to during the last year. They have taken photographs, painted, read and written poems, made films and many new members have joined us, coming to writing as a way to cope, escape – even thrive. Creativity and writing have continued to support and promote health and wellbeing, even during these tougher times.

Many of our members have had their eyes opened to the wonders of online sessions – some expanding internationally, reaching audiences that they would never even have thought of pre-lockdown. But there are worries too. With these grand meetings online, who is being left out? Who are the silent voices being left behind?

A study run last year by Professor Tony Wall and Lapidus looked at the top one percent most health deprived areas in England. Eighty-eight percent of writing activities that stopped in these areas during the lockdown period were not replaced with alternatives, despite all of these areas having new online opportunities for writing being created within them. A main cause of this was ‘limited access to internet technology or know how’. In an article on the Lapidus website, Barbara Bloomfield, former chair of Lapidus states that ‘people with mental health challenges - the very people most likely to benefit from writing for wellbeing - tended to become the most likely to be excluded from participation’.

Online-only is clearly not the answer to make sure we can reach all the communities that need our support. So, after celebrating what Lapidus and the community had achieved over the last 25 years, thoughts turned to the future. Post-lockdown, what does a writing for wellbeing session look like?

Looking to the Future

The answer is: we do not know – yet. But if our 25th anniversary conversations have taught us anything, it is that we should talk to the people out there and find out what they need.

Through our numerous training opportunities and research activity, we are embracing future developments whilst continuing to challenge long held truths about how to live well and relate to one another.

We want to encourage people from all walks of life to join in and raise their voices, tell their stories, offer new ways of thinking, and heal. One of these new ways, for example, has been brought to us through the enthusiasm of board member Kiz Bangerh. She is exploring how writing Hip Hop can be used for wellbeing with her organisation Hip Hop Heals.

The launch of the LIRIC Journal in December 2020 is a further example of the ways in which we seek to document thinking and share good practice, as well as invite debate, showcasing and drawing on international experience of writing for wellbeing through a wide range of frameworks. We are keen to continue with the ongoing training and support activities offered for professional and aspiring professional writers, where resources allow. We now need to hear more from our unpublished or lower profile writers out there, whether they have been writing for wellbeing for many years, many months, or have just started. What are their stories? What works for them?

At Lapidus, we aim to live our values and to this end we support our members who do work with all kinds of community groups across the globe, whether those communities are found in a Cornish coffee shop, or in the Australian outback.