Crafting Verses for Wellbeing: Monthly Poetry Workshop Captivates Attendees

In a unique collaboration between the Thackray Medical Museum, and local community leaders, a monthly poetry workshop series aimed at exploring wellbeing kicked off its inaugural session with great success.

The Wellbeing on our own terms workshops was organised by community advocate Natalie Tharraleos and Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan, author of Tangled in Terror: Uprooting Islamophobia and the poetry collection Postcolonial Banter.

The first event started in May and saw six enthusiastic participants gather at the museum, to discuss the transformative power of poetry.

The chosen theme for the first session was “wellbeing,” with attendees given the opportunity to express their thoughts and experiences on the subject. The aim of the workshop was to create a safe and nurturing space for individuals to explore their emotional responses to the history and displays at the Medical Museum and define what wellness means through the art of creative writing.

During the session, attendees were guided through a series of writing exercises designed to ignite inspiration and reflection on the Thackery Museum.

Commenting on the workshops, Suhaiymah said: “It was a joy, as always, to facilitate such a workshop and I am excited about how this can open up the Thackray and other institutions to more interpretation, re-interpretation and conversation. Museums are not neutral places and the people who live in the surrounding streets should be able to critique, question, ponder and benefit from all that the Thackray offers – this is what these workshops are also about!”

Suhaiymah added that the stimulating conversations stemming from the previous workshops inspired her to actively engage in the ongoing poetry workshops at the Thackray Museum.

“Wellbeing includes so much more than just medicine and its lack. In the first workshop I used census data and biographies about the people who used to live in the Thackray before it was a museum – when it was a workhouse”, Suhaiymah explained, adding: “We thought about such people’s lives and how different or similar they were to those of people in the local area today. Not that much has changed when we think about people’s access to safe jobs, affordable housing, healthy food, for example. 

“This inspired some amazing poems where people wrote odes to the people who used to live in the workhouse, wrote visions of their own “museums of wellbeing” which would include music and herbs and gardens; and wrote their own advice and conversations with the past and present.”

Natalie, who has helped to kickstart many creative initiatives in Harehills added: “Several participants instantly moved us to tears with their brilliant pieces. Without fail, the session showed  that we all have something to say, and in the right environment everyone can shake the shackles of feeling like they are not good enough, and produce a piece of creative writing.”

The workshops was part of an ongoing series designed to explore mental health and wellbeing.

All of the workshops are free and anyone over 18 is welcome to join. The next session will be held on June 22nd, between 10.30pm and 1pm.