Honestly in yesterday’s Workshop we did fairly little but what we did was of great importance. We started by doing some writing exercises, the alphabet game and flow writing before moving onto laying down a contract for workshop behaviour. This as is probably fairly obvious is key to the success of workshops as a whole, they rely on each person being able to trust the feedback that they are being given, taking it on board and acting on it. But they also rely on those giving the feedback to do so helpfully and in such a manner as will not offend, is not personal and is practical to act upon, generalisation is neither helpful nor constructive. The other obvious thing to mention is that staying silent wont help anyone, if you have feedback to give then give it. Obviously make sure that the feedback is thought through first but the principle applies, part of the helpfulness of a workshop comes through gaining the insight of others and if nobody talks well then it defeats the object. I think that this is probably whilst fairly concise an accurate reflection of the events of yesterday. The only other thing I will mention is that the creative exercises at the beginning have resulted in several poetry drafts and some prose writing, some of which will no doubt be uploaded to this blog. with reflection about their creation so stay tuned. As always I hope you are having a great day.
Hugh