If I Speak... Writing Workshop

About

How do we take something lived, felt, remembered, or imagined and turn it into creative work? What do we choose to reveal, reshape, fictionalise, withhold, or leave unsaid?

Led by writer and theatre-maker Saraya Haddad, this 75-minute workshop explores writing from personal and lived experience while retaining agency over what we put on the page.

Inspired by Saraya's own process of transforming lived experience of being spiked into the play SPIKED, the workshop will use discussion and practical writing exercises to explore how experiences, emotions, and ideas can be creatively transformed through different forms of writing.

Themes of agency, consent, control, boundaries, and creative ownership will run throughout, with particular attention paid to the choices writers can make about what they share, how closely a piece stays to lived experience, and what remains private.

Participants will be encouraged to experiment in whatever form feels right to them, be that poetry, playwriting, fiction, non-fiction, dialogue, or something in between!

The workshop is suitable for complete beginners as well as more experienced writers. Participants do not need to have experienced spiking, trauma, or any particular form of harm to take part. Writing can draw on lived experience, observation, imagination, emotion, or any other subject participants would like to explore.

Paper and pens will be available for anyone who needs them. Participants are also welcome to write or type using their own device if preferred.

This is a free event, but numbers are limited for the safety and comfort of all participants.

CHOICE, PARTICIPATION & SUPPORT

Choice and agency will be embedded throughout the workshop. There will be no expectation for participants to disclose personal experiences or explain the relationship between themselves and their writing. Sharing work will always be optional.

Participants will be welcome to interpret prompts in whatever way feels useful to them, change direction, sit out an exercise, pause, or step out of the room at any point.

The workshop may touch on difficult experiences and themes, such as spiking, consent, and trauma; while it is intended to provide a supportive space to explore such topics creatively if participants wish, no one will be asked or encouraged to write directly about those subjects.

While the workshop is designed to be creative and reflective – and participants may find the process therapeutic or beneficial – it is not intended as a replacement for therapy or counselling.

An experienced therapist will join the workshop in a dual participant/support role. They will take part in the creative exercises as part of the group, while also being on hand to provide support or signposting if difficult material comes up for somebody. They will not be providing therapy, assessment, or ongoing one-to-one support during the workshop.

The intention is for support to be quietly embedded within the workshop in a way that does not make participants feel observed, assessed, or expected to engage therapeutically, while enabling the facilitator to focus on the creative aspects of the session.

This workshop is part of the Out There Fringe Fest'26, ​supported using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England​.