27 Jan NAMES//ENWAU: A WELLBEING WORKSHOP

In January 2025, Sian Hughes facilitated a creative writing for wellbeing workshop at Ysgol Gyfun’s Plasmawr ‘Hafan’ unit.

The workshop, aimed at Year 7 – 9 learners at the school’s additional needs unit, gave participants an opportunity to explore personal names, offering an authentic and meaningful starting point for a creative journey that would lead to a piece of creative writing.

Sian Hughes said, “The workshop set the learners on a creative adventure where they found out all sorts of things about their names, including how to write their name in binary code and morse code! There was also an opportunity to respond to discoveries through a graffiti wall featuring text, collage, and post-it notes.”

A binary code translator, from the ‘Science Friday’ website.

The workshop also offered participants to go outside, where the creative adventures continued via a series of divergent thinking activities designed to promote wellbeing and creativity.  These included a game based on the ‘what3words’ app, which encodes geographic co-ordinated into three three fixed dictionary words. (For example, the summit of Eryri is identified by the three words ///ffonia.calonnau.cnociwn.) In the Hafan workshop, participants were sent on a mission to find an alternative three word description for areas within the school field!

Participants brainstorm an alternative ‘what3words’ for a land in the school field!

Sian Hughes added: ‘As in all my creative writing workshops, I used evidence-based creative learning principles when shaping and delivering my workshop at the Hafan. These principles include making sure that content is authentic and engaging, and that opportunities exist for participants to connect with the outdoors and move around.”

In the final part of the workshop, participants were invited to use free-writing techniques to respond to the morning’s session.