Building creative confidence through writing

For over four years our researcher, Cat Jameson, has worked with a group of women of the Global Majority through My Friday Coffee Morning in Barton Hill. My Friday Coffee Morning meets regularly to discuss research, community issues and provide social support.Relationships between university researchers and the community should be healthy. This means that researchers must find ways to give back to the community as well as asking for their views on projects.

Through her work with My Friday Coffee Morning, Cat found that group members were interested in self-development. She found that they were especially keen on developing their confidence and creativity.

Project aims

Our aim is to move from ‘consultation’ to ‘collaboration’. With this project we are filling a community need and investing in the community whilst upskilling members.

We will work with Sukina Noor, the Bristol City Poet 2024-2026 and key members of the My Friday Coffee Morning community to deliver a four-session course on writing confidence and creativity.

Learning from the project

This project will build confidence through writing and self-expression, which will mean:

• Moving towards members being at the heart of future projects
• Developing community members
• Strengthening skills for deeper engagement in BRC research
• Guiding us in creating information accessible to marginalised communities

What we hope to achieve

We will explore and create an illustration and a short video to help us learn how to communicate with communities on future BRC projects.

• The project will upskill and enable the community to feed into future BRC projects with confidence and agency, while also seeking to address power imbalances.