Project name: A Counsellor’s Guide to Creative Therapeutic Writing for Mental Health
Participants: Open to anyone who feels they’ll benefit from this provision
Lead artist: Grace Quantock
Digital platform: Video and pdf resources; digital workshop
Project Information:
Some memories are heavy, we carry them like baggage; they are unread books kept in boxes we never open, dragged with us from house to house. Instead of weighing on us, these stories are the living libraries of our past, ready to be remade or re-titled; understood in the context of our lives today; not something to be ashamed or afraid of, but to be taken out and testified to; to be put in its settled place. This project will help you take your books out of the boxes and place them on the bookshelf. You can use them, or forget them, as you wish. They will no longer be baggage. The project will use printables and video interaction to locate key episodes in a participant’s life across literary genres, distilling the essence of the experiences into iconic book covers, the effect of which can prove cathartic. There’s also quite a lot of chat.
About Grace:
Grace Quantock is a writer and counsellor. She writes about the intersection between social justice, marginalised identities and the creative arts. Her work has been featured in The Guardian, The Fabian Review, The Unexpected Shape and many more. She is working on a book about marginalised bodies in a polarised world.
“Many people who are hurting turn to writing seeking a way to make meaning from suffering, to re-frame the narrative. I’m a writer and counsellor specialising in working with clients with multiple marginalised and oppressed identities. I want to create resources to support people in Wales to access creative writing for wellbeing in a trauma-informed way. I’m particularly interested in offering resources to people who are underrepresented in literature, knowing the literature of Wales will be deepened and developed by their words.” – Grace Quantock
Resources:
Video: How to write about painful emotions or memories in a safe and effective way with Grace Quantock