Literature Wales and Royal College of Psychiatrists Wales Commission

Photograph of Grace sitting in her wheelchair, journalling with a green fountain pen. Her long brunette hair is down over one shoulder and she has a purple dress, green tweed jacket and red lipstick.

Literature Wales, in partnership with the Royal College of Psychiatrists in Wales, are pleased to announce the names of the writers commissioned following the second call-out for engaging literary content and projects for audiences.

The second round of funding for Writer Commissions in partnership with the Royal College of Psychiatrists in Wales was launched on 4 May. The focus for this round was health and wellbeing. Literature is frequently used therapeutically, as preventative, palliative, and curative medicine for some illnesses and disabilities. Cumulatively, potential outcomes of literature and creative writing contribute to improved well-being for individuals, our society, economy, and culture and are crucial to the vibrancy of our national cultural narrative.

The scheme was strongly competitive, with many innovative proposals submitted. From these submissions, ten have been commissioned, and their proposed content and activities aim to benefit writers, readers, and creative audiences during this unsettling time.

The writers selected to develop their content are Fiona Collins, Siân Melangell Dafydd, Ffion Jones, Deborah Llewellyn, Sian Northey, Grace Quantock, Kerry Steed, David Thorpe, Amanda Wells and Paul Whittaker. The commissions include digital workshops for patients with chronic illnesses; digital collections of older people’s memories, a video about safe and effective therapeutic writing; webinars and exercises to build confidence and improve mental health; digital workshops for isolated Home Educated children and disabled groups; writing and yoga workshops and online courses and resources for artists interested in working within the health and well-being sector in both English and Welsh.

Grace Quantock will create a video of how to write about painful emotions or memories in a safe and effective way. She will also write and design a PDF of writing prompts to support carers and disabled people, as well as hosting a closed webinar.Information about each project is available below, with further details and author biographies to be published on the Literature Wales website soon.

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