Collective Encounters is working with Make It Happen (Birkenhead), using creative methods to explore sleep within community groups and organisations. The project will create a new Sleep Hygiene Playbook, providing practical techniques and resources to support healthy, proactive conversations about sleep and wellbeing.
Come and be a part of shaping this unique resource. We want input from people who might want to use or share the Playbook within your teams or the communities you support.
This is the final session within the current phase of the project. Don’t miss your opportunity to be part of it!
To attend, please email liz.ryan6@nhs.net or call 0151 2944470.
6pm
Ugly Bucket are renowned for their distinctive blend of physical storytelling, clown and personal testimony. In this physical workshop, we’ll explore how the curiosity and playful nature of the clown can fuel exciting ensembles. Using clown techniques and collaboration you’ll learn how to build stronger connections as an ensemble, creating work that resonates more deeply with an audience.Expect to move, sweat, laugh and embrace the unexpected.
6pm
As actors, we’re constantly asked to “live in the moment” and “respond truthfully”, as though the events unfolding on stage or screen are happening for the very first time.
But when the “play’s the thing” and the performance often repeated or recreated multiple times, how do we keep our work fresh? How do we find genuine freedom and immediacy, and allow ourselves to make new discoveries each time we step into the space?
This workshop explores the art of truthful response through observation, impulse and play.
Through a series of practical exercises, we’ll sharpen our awareness, strengthen our listening, and practise responding to genuine stimulus.
By shifting our attention away from ourselves and our prepared choices, and onto our scene partner and our environment, we will explore how authentic connection can enable more spontaneous, alive and compelling performance.
Writer’s Bloc Birkenhead: Screenwriting For Beginners with Margy McShane
Margy McShane is a teacher of Screenwriting and Creative Writing. She has taught at LJMU, Manchester Metropolitan University, and on many community projects throughout Liverpool including WOW and The Bluecoat. She’s facilitated anthologies at WOW and SWAN Women’s centre and has an MA distinction in Screenwriting and a Diploma for Teaching in the Lifelong Learning Sector (DTLLS)
Screenwriting For Beginners – an introduction to the fist principles of writing for film and television. A welcoming and informal session which includes an optional freewriting session and analysis of a short film sequence. No previous writing experience required.
Monday 9th November 202610:30am – 12:30pm
Birkenhead Central Library, Borough Road, Birkenhead, CH41 2XB
Register for The Writer’s Bloc HERE
The Writer’s Bloc Bootle: Showing Personality in Writing with Charlie Lea
Charlie Lea is passionate about all things literary. As well as writing his own stories, he loves running creative writing workshops for both adults and children, online and in person as well as promoting the joy of reading to all. For his work boosting literacy and a love of all things literary, he was appointed as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in 2017. He runs regular creative writing workshops for both adults and children through his organisation Read Now Write Now www.readnowwritenow.org.uk
During the 2 hour session we will look at how to show personality using dialogue, thought and action and will also look at showing neuro diversity and using dramatic irony.
Wednesday 16th September 202611am-1pm
Bootle Library, 220 Stanley Road, Liverpool, L20 3EN
Register for The Writer’s Bloc HERE
Poetry – Redrafting/Editing with Alison Schultz
Alison Schultz is a poet and musician from the beautiful Wirral Peninsula aka The Left Bank of the Mersey and has a background in teaching up to Post Graduate level. She is one of the team who run Wirral Poetry Festival (annual), curates/hosts a monthly performance night, The Wordsmithery, and performs at Arts Centres and Galleries accompanied by a guitarist. She is much anthologised and her previous volumes, Eyes on the Bright Horizon (2018) and Observatory (2021) are available on Amazon, her latest pamphlet being The Hushed Passing of the Blue Hour (2025 Yaffle’s Nest), very soon to be followed by Ugly Shoes (Yaffle’s Nest) in 2026, and longer collection Night on my Mind in 2027. She is currently the Wirral Libraries Poet-in-Residence and the Ambassador for the National Year of Reading.
Friday 11th September 202611am-1pm
Toxteth Library, Windsor Street, Liverpool, L8 1XF
Register for the Writer’s Bloc HERE
The Writer’s Bloc Bootle: Words for Change: Writing Protest Poetry with Amina Atiq
Amina Atiq is a Yemeni-British poet, teaching artist, performer and award-winning community activist whose practice centres on storytelling, social justice and community cohesion.
Her work spans poetry, performance, education and community engagement through international residencies, commissions and collaborations. These include Weston Jerwood Creative, the Humboldt Foundation Residency (Germany), Roots & Routes (Germany and the Netherlands), Erasmus+ Theatre-makers for Social Change (Hungary), Queensland Poetry Festival (Australia), the Imperial War Museum, University College London as Poet in Residence, the Norfolk Ponds Project (The Secret Life of Ponds), Museum of Colour’s These Things Matter exhibition, and Guest Poet at MANX Litfest 2024.
Explore poetry as a tool for resistance, storytelling and self-expression. Participants will discover how poets use language, imagery and repetition to express personal experiences, challenge injustice and share meaningful messages. Through exploring protest poetry and the Al-Ghazal form, participants will develop and write their own poems inspired by themes that matter to them.
Wednesday 19th August 202611am-1pm
Bootle Library, 220 Stanley Road, Liverpool, L20 3EN
Register for The Writer’s Bloc HERE
Writer’s Bloc Birkenhead: Showing Personality in Writing with Charlie Lea
Charlie Lea is passionate about all things literary. As well as writing his own stories, he loves running creative writing workshops for both adults and children, online and in person as well as promoting the joy of reading to all. For his work boosting literacy and a love of all things literary, he was appointed as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in 2017. He runs regular creative writing workshops for both adults and children through his organisation Read Now Write Now www.readnowwritenow.org.uk
During the 2 hour session we will look at how to show personality using dialogue, thought and action and will also look at showing neuro diversity and using dramatic irony.
Birkenhead Central Library, Borough Road, Birkenhead, CH41 2XBMonday 14th September 202610:30am – 12:30pm
Please register HERE
The Writer’s Bloc Bootle: What’s Your Story? With Jenny Newman
Jenny Newman has written three novels, Going In (Penguin), Life Class (Chatto & Windus) and In the Blood (Psychology News Press). She is also the author of A Novel in Nine Steps (Mslexia Publications), editor of The Faber Book of Seductions, and co-editor of British and Irish Novelists: an introduction through interviews (Arnold); The Writer’s Workbook (Arnold) and Women Talk Sex: autobiographical writing on sex, sexuality and sexual identity (Scarlet Press). Her short fiction has been broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and published in The London Magazine. She is a former Head of Creative Writing at Liverpool John Moores University.
Everyone has a story to tell that belongs to them alone. Writing a memoir can be a precious act of self-discovery, and a way of finding meaning in key aspects of your life. This workshop will help you explore the craft of memoir writing and help you to find and develop your voice. Allowing space for short, structured exercises we will consider crucial techniques and ethical issues, and ways in which you can start to shape and share your memories in a way that both engages and inspires.
Wednesday 11th November 202611am-1pm
Bootle Library, 220 Stanley Road, Liverpool, L20 3EN
Register for The Writer’s Bloc HERE
Meet the experts themselves! Wednesdays through Summer 2026 World Museum are hosting their fabulous curatorial team to tell all about herbivorous dinosaurs, prehistoric insects, giant birds, folklore, and fossils. Suitable for all ages.
To join them, book tickets for the Natural History Centre Exploration Space at 2pm and 2.30pm on the following Wednesdays:5 Aug, 12 Aug, 19 Aug, 26 Aug.
