Workshops

Rommi Smith is a qualified secondary school teacher (PGCE), respected and experienced workshop leader (PGCW).

With over twenty years’ experience teaching creative writing from nursery to university level, to her credit, Rommi is the creator of bespoke creative writing experiences. She tailors creative writing workshops and events for a wealth of festivals, groups, conferences, organisations and institutions, including: The Writing Squad, The International Schools’ Theatre Association; Arvon, Studio12 and The Poetry School.

Rommi has worked, as a writer in therapeutic contexts for twenty years, leading workshops for women living in Women’s Aid refuges, people resident in psychiatric units and mothers attending perinatal units. She has facilitated writing residencies for The Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture. She was appointed NHS Writer in Residence (LYPFT) working across Services to utilise creative writing as a tool for positive mental health and physical wellbeing. Due to the success of the work, she was invited to present creative writing, findings and methodologies at The Royal College of Psychiatrists’ Annual Conference. Rommi co-facilitates The Baggage Handlers, a drop in writers’ group for people living with mental health issues. The group is working on it’s first full collection of poems and stories.

Rommi designs education resources and teacher training sessions for organisations as diverse as The Parliamentary Education Service, to Creative Partnerships and the National Association of Writers in Education (NAWE). Recently she was selected, as a consultant, for Outstanding Arts, Outstanding Literacy in Hull, a cross city initiative aimed at engaging teachers to rethink approaches to literacy, using creative writing.
Featured in the multi-award-winning documentary film, We Are Poets, Rommi was poet coach to the film’s young poets in their lead up to competing at
Brave New Voices poetry slam championships, in the US. Brave New Voices is widely recognised as the biggest and most prestigious poetry slam championships in the world. Rommi set the poetry exercise to which writer/artist Joseph Buckley responded, creating We Are Poets’ evocative and dramatic opening:

We Are Poets documentary / Teaser from We Are Poets on Vimeo.

The opening of the film exist as a short film its own right and is award-winning, having received A Darklight film award.

Rommi runs her own bi-monthly advanced creative writing workshop. Under her guidance, group members have published their first book of new work and perform their work at various festivals and events. View and buy this book here

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