A celebration of creativity and the healing potential of storytelling with the award-winning novelist Jon McGregor and Sebastian Groes
Doors: 7pm. The event will start at 7:30
Tickets: Free
Booking is required via link below. Donations welcome
This Being Human Festival 2023 event launches Sebastian Groes’ stroke memoir Right in the Head, a book that mixes a personal experience of stroke with a critical investigation of brain trauma in cultural history. Groes will argue that creative activity – and especially storytelling – can help stroke survivors navigate their new internal landscapes as they plot their own route to recovery.
Starting with a unique performance by actor Raymond Waring (24 Hour Party People and No Time to Die), you are invited to join Professor Groes (University ofWolverhampton), Creative Writing for Wellbeing Facilitator Kate Poll and novelist and creative writing lecturer Jon McGregor (University of Nottingham) in exploring the importance of creativity in recovery after brain trauma.
A stroke is often an extremely confounding event that can shatter one’s personality as well as one’s relationship with other people and the world. This is especially true when people’s ability to express themselves is affected. As McGregor notes in his novel about a stroke, Lean Fall Stand (2021): ‘Aphasia (language impairment)affects all aspects of a person’s communication but the ability to tell stories can be a significant loss.’
Participants will be invited to engage in interactive creative writing activities to help us test a unique tool to help the recovery of stroke survivors. You will be able to do one or more exercises that use creative writing prompts as well as poetic and visual imagery linked to research on the impact on the brain of creative activities.
This event is part of Being Human Festival, the UK’s national festival of the humanities, taking place 9–18 November 2023. For further information please see beinghumanfestival.org.