Back around 2008 I got an email asking if I’d like to run writing workshops as part of a series of creative retreats in in the Pays D’Oc, south west France. It was out of the blue, like a fairy had waved her wand. What an opportunity. I had a chat with the owner / host Moira Martingale, a former journalist, and we decided to give it a go. Write Like Nobody’s Watching at French House Party went so well we ran them every year - expanding to two weeks to incorporate two different set ups : one taught and one self-guided week - for fourteen years (breaking only in 2020).
Moira and I became friends over the years, and I’m sure that fed into the welcome we offered those who came. We had such fun, creating the environment for stimulation and relaxation. The food was delicious. The people (mostly) appreciative. My partner came latterly and offered walking meditation sessions for those who wanted to begin their days with such attention and stillness. Deepening my connection with that small region of France became a delight over those years. I’d stay longer. Drink in the mountains, the coasts, the lakes, the book towns, the castles, the wine, and cheese. Moira and I would take a day out between the two courses to visit a village or the coast. Moira was generous enough to cover the cost of my train travel, there and back, when the thought of flying became harder for me to stomach. I would take another day or two after the course to see something more of somewhere en route.
When we came back together after the pandemic, I had changed. I found the travel and the heat more troublesome - to go all that way to work with people writing on things that had nothing to do with the place we were in, for it to be too hot for people to want to leave the grounds. I found the socialising harder - every meal was taken together. I found my mojo for the facilitation was waning. I needed more and more time to retreat from the retreat everyone else was taking. So I found someone else to run the week and stepped back. My time was over. A new season needed to start.
And for me too. When I realised I didn’t want to continue running these weeks I knew I didn’t want to stop facilitating that space for people (and often myself) to write and dream. I loved the process of building of that spacetime. I just wanted to do it closer to home, more accessible, less expensive. I wanted the place we were in to have more of an impact on those of us visiting it. I wanted more community, less alcohol (yes, my 40 year old self, I’m looking at you), more stillness. So when I was on a residency with Settle Stories in January 2024 in this old mansion in Giggleswick, working, as one of twelve artists, on their Storyful Way, I knew I had found the place I wanted to trial a new Imaginarium retreat.
I also knew I didn’t want to run it solo. Moira had been a key part of making the Write Like Nobody’s Watching work (or play) so well. Someone to share the stresses and joys with. Someone to plan with. Someone to talk candidly to. I had already run an Ancestral Imaginarium with Katherine Zeserson and knew she had experience of running residential retreats so she was the obvious choice. As well as experienced, Katherine is joyful, intuitive, creatively curious and energetic.
Our first Worlds in Progress Retreat ran in January 2025 with ten other people who work, create and play with text somehow. We offered sitting, singing and flexing every morning, for those who wanted. We suggested loose mealtimes to suit however everyone liked to eat - sorting ourselves out for breakfast and lunch - and to fit around whatever was the occupation for people’s days. We invited people to share their creative practice during playshops later in some of the afternoons. These were attended by maybe two thirds of the group, those who wanted a break from their own head, or wanted to explore what they were writing in a different way, or who fancied some playtime. We offered one to ones to anyone who wanted to chat about anything they wanted. We had cooking teams for the evening veggie meal and lingered long over them with chat and laughter that often took someone (or two or three) out into the January nights for further exploration of our wider world in progess. We were blessed with an astonishing week of snow and ice (far far from the temperatures of the last year I was in St Raymond when it reached 55° in the sun).
We wrote and researched. Even I wrote for a couple of hours every afternoons, beginning a new long form iece that had been cooking in the recesses of my imagination for a while. We made new friends. We found commonalities. We were given space. We learnt new words, new ideas, and felt safe enough to share ignorances, unknowns, uncertainities and silly things. In short, we constructed a world we wanted to inhabit and nourish and sustain.
Some who came, came with a sense of fraudulance - the original call out was for ‘text-based artists’ - for anyone whose creative practice worked with text in any form - and this word triggered people’s doubt they were an artist. But the artistry that was seeded and flowered and continues to be shared from that week is clear to me. The careful crafting of love and generosity, the sharing, the giving and receiving of intention, and the relishing of beauty and preciousness in life. That confidence was felt across the board it seemed. It was such a delight that everything came together to make this new form Imaginarium such a blissful retreat experience.
It takes time for seeds to germinate. The seeds of our imagination don’t come in packets that explain when or where to sow and how long they’ll take to flower. The seeds of our imagination need various, soils and weather conditions to nourish them. Our intuition knows these conditions. And perhaps these seeds aren’t too particular or tender. Perhaps they are. Nothing can tell us how long until harvest. We need to water these seeds with faith (by which I mean the fertile mix of trust and confidence), and a selective choice of positive actions (with a sprinkle of learnings). And perhaps most importantly we need not to over-tend, not insist on a timeframe. Nor over focus, but to encourage with a light touch, accepting other shoots may grow in the soil we’re feeding, that rogue seeds are already in there. All life begins in the dark. The unexpected is inevitable. As a creative spirit it’s easiest to welcome whatever appears and ask: Who are you? How can I help you grow? How can you help my growth? In what world can we thrive?
If you’d like to know about the next Worlds In Progress Retreat that’s happening in January 2026, then head over to this page. We ask for ‘Expressions of Interest’ (by the end of July) to be sure that what you’re wanting is what we’re offering.