When I set my goals for 2019, one of my long term ones was to put together a writers retreat and, in January 2020, I did just that. (Which is interesting, because I don’t consider reaching a goal within 1 year as long term lol)
The idea of a writers retreat seemed like bliss, something I personally needed as a creative to recharge, and I felt like a lot of other creatives would need the same. As well as this, I thought a writers retreat would provide a safe space for people to share ideas, work through problems and spark creativity in ways some might not think of. I knew putting one together would be a lot of work - which is why I initially made it a long term goal - but the formation of a new company presented an opportune time for me to try it out.
Following the second run of Love Thy Fro: The Musical last year, the adaptation of my children’s book that I co-wrote and executive produced, my co-writers and I decided to create a production company where we could explore creating and developing more stories.
We needed to get our wider team together to let them know our plans, so I figured why not use this as an excuse to try out my retreat?! It would be the perfect way to mark the start of the company by creating a safe space for the team to bond while participating in exercises and activities to awaken their creative minds.
Sometimes you just need to get away from the realities of life and completely switch off to get back in touch with your creativity. I found a beautiful house outside of London that we escaped to for 3 nights and thanks to the serene surroundings, fresh air, poor signal and weak wifi, we had one of our most beautiful bonding experiences as a team.
Through exercises around storytelling, creative thinking and songwriting, we were able to spark creativity and get people thinking outside of the box. We had in depth discussions about topics such as The Black Experience, played games to get our minds working and watched films for inspiration. We also did some team building activities to improve communication, teamwork and problem solving skills.
Some of our team have had less creative roles and felt they had no creative spark at all. Others felt somewhat creatively stifled or facing different levels of writer's block; I was one of the latter, but the retreat helped us all in one way or another. We came away with new ideas to explore, and a clearer sense of creative direction moving forward.
As a team, we can’t wait to begin this new journey as a production company and create new stories while continuing to develop Love Thy Fro: The Musical. We’ll announce the company soon enough. We also plan to put together more writer’s retreats, some that we can offer for others to come on as well, as we have found there to be so many benefits that we want to share with others.
Keep an eye on my socials, as I’ll probably put up any future retreats there, as well as on the @LTFmusical instagram page.
It’d be good to know, though: would you be interested in coming on a writer’s retreat?!
One thought on “I Put Together a Writer’s Retreat – and it BANGED!”
Long time supporter, and thought I’d drop a comment.
Your wordpress site is very sleek – hope you don’t mind me asking what theme you’re using?
(and don’t mind if I steal it? :P)
I just launched my site –also built in wordpress like yours– but the
theme slows (!) the site down quite a bit.
In case you have a minute, you can find it by
searching for “royal cbd” on Google (would appreciate any
feedback) – it’s still in the works.
Keep up the good work– and hope you all take care of yourself during the coronavirus scare!
Comments are closed.