Lyra Community Collabs (+ Workshops) 2024
Each year, Lyra commissions a variety of community groups to collaborate with the festival and deliver specific activities, engaging people all over the city with poetry throughout March 2024, leading up to the festival in April.
Scroll down to find out about free and low-cost public workshops you can sign up for, including Literature Works advice surgeries, Our Future workshops, and the Bonds poetry project.
This year we are commissioning the following groups who are responding to our 2024 theme Poetic Futures.
Word by Word, an online-first collective, will be facilitating a writing workshop themed around climate anxiety and land, aimed particularly at writers whose identities are marginalised.
Bristol After Stroke will offer Zoom poetry workshops for an aphasia group with communication disabilities, facilitated by a speech and language therapist, using group poetry to consider futures and whether AI/technology can help people with aphasia.
Our Future (Braiding Stories & Poetry Together) is a collaborative project bringing together Polish and Somali women in Bristol to explore and share stories, poetry in their own languages and in English, and creating line-by-line poems, working alongside a number of community organisations across Bristol. Led by Agata Palmer.
We Will Read You are delivering a project themed around Queer Futures, inviting artists from Bristol and beyond about to respond to queer futures, utopias and (sometimes) dystopias - including navigating race, disability and class. Their cabaret-style event will open Lyra Festival on April 12th 2024. Led by Tom Stockley and Aish Humphreys.
Bonds Poetry Exhibition is a poetic exploration of the significance of the word ‘Bonds’ in all its contexts in the entwined histories of Bristolians, led by Ralph Hoyte and Martin Rieser. They are delivering writing workshops bringing together communities across the city, as well as both an app-based experience and a visual exhibition at Bristol Beacon during Lyra Festival 2024.
South Bristol: Bonds Poetry Workshop
DATE: Saturday 16th March 2024
TIME: 10:00am - 13:0opm
VENUE: Zion Bristol, Bishopsworth Rd, Bristol BS13 7JW
ACCESS: A fully accessible building with an accessible toilet
Join us for an exciting poetry workshop in South Bristol! Whether you're a seasoned poet or just starting out, this event is perfect for you. We'll be gathering at Zion Bristol, located at Bishopsworth Rd, Bristol BS13 7JW, UK.
Don't miss out on this incredible opportunity to bond with like-minded individuals and discover the magic of poetry.
Open to all- No writing experience necessary.
This welcoming workshop is designed to be friendly and supportive and will develop your writing and storytelling skills to create and weave lines into poems with local South Bristol Poets, Agata and Lisa. Even if you have never written poetry or would like to be inspired, this will be a great workshop for you.
Please come and write with us.
We can explore memories, stories and family histories of South Bristol. We will explore all our "bonds" to this place of home, work, sport, neighbourhood and local tales.
There will be writing prompts and exercises with warm advice from workshop facilitators Lisa and Agata.
There will be an opportunity if you are interested to share some of your work, in a poetry exhibition at Bristol Beacon.
Poetry and Freedom: Bonds Poetry Workshop
DATE: Saturday 23rd March 2024
TIME: 10:00am - 13:0opm
VENUE: St Pauls Learning Centre, 94 Grosvenor Road Saint Paul's BS2 8XJ
ACCESS: A fully accessible building with accessible toilets on each level
Join award-winning poet Jenny Mitchell for a Freedom-Poetry writing session on March 23, 2024 at 10:00 PM, and unleash your creativity.
The workshop is open to all participants, but particularly those wishing to improve their poetry skills and explore past histories and present cultures
Jenny Mitchell won the Gregory O’Donoghue Prize in 2023 for a single poem, and the Poetry Book Awards 2021 for her second collection, Map of a Plantation, which is on the syllabus at Manchester Metropolitan University. The prize-winning debut collection, Her Lost Language, is One of 44 Poetry Books for 2019 (Poetry Wales), and her latest collection, Resurrection of a Black Man, contains three prize-winning poems and is featured on the US podcast Poetry Unbound. She’s won numerous competitions, is widely-published, has performed at the Houses of Parliament and has just been made Poet-in-Residence at Sussex University.
Literature Works: Advice Surgeries
DATE: Wednesday 20th March & Monday 25th March 2024
TIMES: 10:00am - 10:45am, 12:00 - 12:45pm, 3:00 - 3:45pm
VENUE: ONLINE (ZOOM)
To connect with this year's Lyra festival theme of 'Digital Futures', Literature Works are offering Advice Surgeries that will focus on Social Media & Digital Communication.
These 45-minute sessions with Literature Works staff will be guided by the writer's own interests and needs. Some areas that could be discussed include:
social media platforms
creating an effective social media profile
creating content - posting patterns and strategies
author websites and blogs - hosting and building options
podcasting platforms and technology requirements
engaging with online writing communities
When booking your place, please indicate which particular areas you wish to discuss by selecting from the drop-down box.
The surgeries will take place on Wednesday 20th March and Monday 25th March at the following times:
10- 10.45 am
12 -12.45 pm
3 – 3.45 pm
These surgeries will take place online via Zoom, you will be emailed a Zoom link after booking.
These surgeries are pay what you can. We want our work and expertise to be available to all writers in the South West regardless of income. Our team invests time and resources into preparing for your advice surgery, to make them affordable to underrepresented writers we are suggesting £10 full price to £5 concession. We ask that you pay what you feel able to contribute towards this cost. To do this, you can modify the suggested price on booking, it is possible to book them for free.
PLEASE NOTE: These surgeries are reserved for people who have booked via the Lyra Festival website.
Our Future: Braiding Stories & Poetry Together
DATE: Saturday 27th April & Saturday 4th May 2024
TIME: 10:00am - 13:00pm
VENUE: ACTA Gladstone St, Bedminster, Bristol BS3 3AY
ACCESS: A fully accessible building with a disabled toilet.
This event is for Polish and Somali women, but you will need to speak some English. Please get in contact via Eventbrite (link below) if you need more details.
FREE poetry workshop bringing together women of the two largest minorities in Bristol: Polish & Somali
What we will do:
· Learn about each other’s cultures via poetry & stories
· Share some stories in our languages and English
· Use prompts to develop new writing
· Create a group poem
· Start building links between our two communities, discovering similarities in our cultures.
What will you need:
· Pen and paper, or laptop, if you prefer
· Own refreshments and snacks (café is not open at weekends)
Following the workshops, there could be an opportunity to continue as a regular online writing group and to perform in an open mic event in September.
Facilitated by Agata Palmer, a bilingual Polish-British poet based in Bristol. Her pamphlet From the Land of Marmite with Love was published by Exiled Writers Ink in 2021. Her poems have been published online and internationally in magazines and anthologies. She is a regular at local open mics, a part of Bristol Poetry Stanza, Diverse Artists Network.
This event is funded Lyra Poetry Festival, in collaboration with Diverse Artists Network.
Word by Word Workshop: exploring land, climate, words & sound with asmaa jama
Word by Word, an online-first creative writing group, will be facilitating a writing and sound workshop themed around climate anxiety and land. The will be led by multidisciplinary artist, writer and filmmaker Asmaa Jama.
DATE: Sunday 28th April 2024
TIME: 3pm - 5pm, including 2 x breaks (10 mins + 15 mins)
VENUE: Watershed (W1)
ACCESS: The venue is wheelchair accessible, and has toilets for all genders.
This workshop is open to new, aspiring and established writers. No prior writing experience necessary! Aged 18 or over.
We particularly welcome writers of colour to join.
Description:
What trace do we leave behind? What new worlds are possible out of the old? What would they sound like?
Join multidisciplinary artist, writer and filmmaker Asmaa Jama for a creative writing workshop exploring themes of land and climate anxiety, through words, sound and performance.
This is an interactive workshop where you will be invited to explore recording some of your words (whether a word or a full poem, there will be no pressure!), and outside sounds that resonate with you.
This workshop is open to new, aspiring and established writers, particularly welcoming writers of colour. No prior writing experience is necessary.
The outcomes of this workshop are twofold:
Asmaa will work with you to write and find confidence in your work, and offer examples of different kinds of performance styles.
Asmaa will bring words and sounds that participants have chosen to record during the workshop together with music that Asmaa has made, to create a collective sound piece.
Within the week after the workshop, you will be sent a private soundcloud link to listen back to the soundpiece!
The workshop will feature (in order):
Written exercises that encourage you to engage with the themes in a light touch way.
Examples of some of the ways that written works can be performed, including demonstrations from Asmaa.
A short break - for you to pause, and have the opportunity to take time to record sounds that will be used in the soundscape, both in the workshop space and outside of the building (using voice notes).
The opportunity to share any works you have written during the session (should you feel comfortable to do so).
A second short break - for you to pause, while Asmaa pieces together your voice and sound recordings into a soundscape.
A chance to listen to the soundscape and share reflections on it.
Within the week following the workshop, you will receive a private soundcloud link to listen to the soundscape.
What to bring to the workshop:
+ If you're able to, please bring a pen and notebook
+ A phone that you can use to record (in voice notes of similar), if this is available to you
+ There will be some snacks available at the workshop, please let us know if you have any food allergies ahead of the workshop date (Watershed’s cafe will also be open.)
+ Feel free to bring already recorded sounds with you to the workshop to add into the soundscape!
Tickets:
Tickets are £PayAsYouFeel (from £0). We particularly welcome writers of colour.
If you have any queries about the workshop or have any access requirements you’d like us to be aware of, our email is wordbywordcollective@gmail.com, and we will do all we can to provide what you need!
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Asmaa Jama is a Danish-Somali poet, artist and filmmaker based in Bristol.
Asmaa’s writing has been commissioned by Jerwood Arts, Hayward Gallery, Arnolfini and Ifa Gallery, Berlin. Their written works have been published in places like The Poetry Review, Nataal and Magma. In theatre, they have written for, and are performing in, Dorothee Munyaneza’s Mailles, and have written for Radouan Mrziga’s Akal.
Their first film work Before We Disappear (2021), was an interactive moving image piece commissioned by BBC Arts, followed by The Season of Burning Things (2021), in collaboration with Gouled Ahmed, commissioned by the Bristol Old Vic (2021) and Except this time nothing returns from the ashes (2022), commissioned by Spike Island. Their work has also been presented at the Venice Architecture Biennale in collaboration with the Goethe Institute and Theatre Neumarkt’s 100 Ways to Say We Programme (2021), and was the official selection at Blackstar Film Festival, Aesthetica Film Festival and Sharjah Film Platform 5 (2022).