SEASIDE SPOKEN WORD

Part 1 - Writing adventures on the beach and ashore. Two workshops led by Sarah Leppington and designed to give festival goers a chance to engage with Tees and Empathy’s latest project, 'By The Sea's Side'. Tees and Empathy support mental health and build self esteem through the creative writing inspired by North Yorkshire's astonishing coastal vistas here in North Yorkshire. 
 

The workshops are a celebration of our precious coastline alongside our own wellbeing.

Walking and talking in a small, friendly group - open to all abilities, genders and ages - be inspired by gentle activities that will align your heart and soul with the movement of the ocean. 

The beach walks will be centred on mindfulness, including searching for pebbles with various purposes ( eg 'one that represents me' and 'one that speaks to how I feel now', breathing with the sea, drawing symbols in the sand and creating intention through path-making (on a very small scale!), and will inform the next steps back on land (see below). 

Part 2 - Writing adventures on the beach and ashore. Two workshops led by Sarah Leppington and designed to give festival goers a chance to engage with Tees and Empathy’s latest project, 'By The Sea's Side'. Tees and Empathy support mental health and build self esteem through the creative writing inspired by North Yorkshire's astonishing coastal vistas here in North Yorkshire. 

The workshops are a celebration of our precious coastline alongside our own wellbeing.

Walking and talking in a small, friendly group - open to all abilities, genders and ages - be inspired by gentle activities that will align your heart and soul with the movement of the ocean.

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Meeting back up again with facilitator Sarah, ‘dry land’ becomes an ocean of notions!  Docking in the quiet, safe space of Lune Street, we will share our impressions using simple creative activities, putting colour and shape to the morning’s experiences.

Taking away a meaningful memento of the day, Sarah wants you to leave the workshops feeling refreshed and ready to dive back in to your Big Adventure, surfing life’s waves as they ebb and flow… 

Join novelist and storyteller Carmen Marcus and Teesside poetry legend Bob Beagrie for a gentle write-and-walk trail exploring the stranger side of Saltburn out of the sunshine and into the shadow world of ghosts, hobs and fairies.

Stopping at sites and viewpoints steeped in local folklore, we’ll encounter the fairies of Fairy Glen, the Hob of Hob Hill, the Zetland Hotel’s secret tunnels and ghost train, the wreck that destroyed the old pier, and the spirits said to haunt the Ha’penny Bridge. Along the way there will be opportunities to write, share stories and gather inspiration from the landscape.

Participants are warmly invited to read their work later at the evening’s Teesmouth Live event.

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Please arrive promptly at 11.50am.

Accessibility and practical information:

Please dress for the weather. The walk follows the Top Promenade and pavements, with level ground throughout. There will be some steps on and off kerbs and a few cobbled sections, but no walking on grass. Please bring notebooks and writing implements.

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Previously a working artist/songwriter, Mark began engrossed with writing stories in 2020. Finding the process quite addictive, he moved from short stories to novels almost accidentally.  With the recent novel, Highwayman, Mark has incorporated elements of the local folklore from North Yorkshire.  He has been fascinated with folklore since childhood and will be talking about how he has used this knowledge within this latest adventure.  Mark has also written and published Invisible, Medium and The Middlesbrough Merlin.

An afternoon of poetry and folklore featuring acclaimed writers from the North East, plus an open mic. 

Headliner: Kym Deyn

Poet and writer of weird fiction, who moonlights variously as a tarot reader, librarian and editor of Newcastle-based publisher The Braag CIC, Kym Deyn will read from Folkish.

Folkish is a trickster masquerading as a poetry collection. Full of ghosts, worms, saints and Northern English folklore, Kym Deyn’s debut is playful, spirited and absolutely furious, moving between the living, the legendary and the haunted in endlessly inventive forms.

Bob Beagrie

Bob Beagrie reads from The Hand of Glory, a sizzling collection of prose poems inspired by the severed hand of folklore – a magical object said to belong to a murderer. Through a time-travelling journey of discovery, Beagrie has created a richly layered work full of dark humour, myth and masterful storytelling.

Carmen Marcus

Carmen Marcus reads from Keen, her newly crafted lyrical tale rooted in Irish folklore. Meet Maeve Ireland, the last and worst of the keening women, and hear the voices of the ghosts gathering to cross over as she searches for the song she must sing.

Plus an opportunity to perform on the open mic 

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A celebration of folklore, stories and the strange voices that still linger around the Teesmouth

Part 1 - Writing adventures on the beach and ashore. Two workshops led by Sarah Leppington and designed to give festival goers a chance to engage with Tees and Empathy’s latest project, 'By The Sea's Side'. Tees and Empathy support mental health and build self esteem through the creative writing inspired by North Yorkshire's astonishing coastal vistas here in North Yorkshire. 

The workshops are a celebration of our precious coastline and  alongside our own wellbeing.

Walking and talking in a small, friendly group - open to all abilities, genders and ages - be inspired by gentle activities that will align your heart and soul with the movement of the ocean. 

The beach walks will be centred on mindfulness, including searching for pebbles with various purposes ( eg 'one that represents me' and 'one that speaks to how I feel now', breathing with the sea, drawing symbols in the sand and creating intention through path-making (on a very small scale!), and will inform the next steps back on land (see below). 

Part 2 - Writing adventures on the beach and ashore. Two workshops led by Sarah Leppington and designed to give festival goers a chance to engage with Tees and Empathy’s latest project, 'By The Sea's Side'. Tees and Empathy support mental health and build self esteem through the creative writing inspired by North Yorkshire's astonishing coastal vistas here in North Yorkshire. 

The workshops are a celebration of our precious coastline alongside our own wellbeing.

Walking and talking in a small, friendly group - open to all abilities, genders and ages - be inspired by gentle activities that will align your heart and soul with the movement of the ocean.

​

Meeting back up again with facilitator Sarah, ‘dry land’ becomes an ocean of notions!  Docking in the quiet, safe space of Lune Street, we will share our impressions using simple creative activities, putting colour and shape to the morning’s experiences.

Taking away a meaningful memento of the day, Sarah wants you to leave the workshops feeling refreshed and ready to dive back in to your Big Adventure, surfing life’s waves as they ebb and flow… 

Most traditional English folksongs performed these days were collected in the countryside of the southern half of the country just over a century ago. Later collectors not only ventured into previously neglected northern counties but went in search of urban songs too. In this updated and revised talk, former journalist Brian Gaudet takes a broad view of that century of song collecting - with special emphasis on his own native Norfolk, and his new adopted home area in Cumbria.