Poetry Workshops

Have you ever experienced the magical powers of poetry? 

We believe isolation, loneliness and disconnection within and between communities are the underlying causes of almost all the issues we face as a country - the mental health crisis, widening inequality and social polarisation. If we can tackle loneliness we can unlock the solutions to many other problems too.

Our Building Connections Training is an energising and enriching experience, giving you a framework for understanding loneliness, a language for talking about it, by leveraging your knowledge and experiences to build a shared understanding with the other people in the room.

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  • Loneliness has been called the public health crisis of our generation. It is detrimental for mental and physical health and affects our productivity too. We believe the problem is actually even bigger than that: loneliness is one of the main root causes of all the issues we work on. In particular, loneliness creates the conditions for hate, intolerance and social fragmentation (disconnection between different communities of people) and inequality. 

    It is the economic and political system that has driven the steady rise in loneliness and decline in community. Tackling loneliness will help to create the conditions for changing that system positively. 

    Different people will be motivated to tackle loneliness for different reasons. We all need a deeper and a shared understanding of loneliness so that we can work in unison to create new behaviours in our neighbourhoods, places of work, places of learning etc. Re-building connection and community is a bottom-up endeavour and we all have a part to play; community leaders, grassroots organisations, schools, statutory organisations and businesses are ideally placed to lead the charge.

  • Our acclaimed interactive training teaches the theory of loneliness - which is a relatively new social phenomenon - whilst generating creative solutions and the shared understanding needed to empower you to transform your local environments.

    We are proud to have been tasked with developing the go-to training by the Campaign to End Loneliness back in 2021. It has since been trialled and proven with over 500 people from all sectors across the UK and renamed the Building Connections Training.

    It is a four-part interactive workshop that can be adapted for different people, organisations, networks or partnerships. Over two half-days, we learn about the causes and symptoms of loneliness, and most importantly, what we can do to bring about solutions.

    As participants, we’ll call on your personal and professional experience to help us teach key theory, connect on a human level, and build a shared understanding among everyone in the room. This shared understanding creates a springboard for the fourth and final session coaching participants to develop action plans for tackling loneliness in their communities. 

    The sessions are fascinating, collaborative, honest - and good fun! They are perfect for team-building, providing opportunities to bond and build on strategy.

  • Anyone! It has been designed to be easily  adapted to people of  all ages, backgrounds and sectors. Participants don’t need any professional experience of loneliness, we all have some personal exposure (whether first hand or not) that we can draw on.

    The training was originally developed with grassroots organisations, statutory sector professionals and/or community leaders working in a place-based way in mind. It enables those working within the same locality to understand their role as a cog in a tackling loneliness machine… building solidarity between those working on different, -seemingly unrelated - issues. ]However, the sessions also work well as a staff training and we can deliver a version to teams within larger organisations wanting to foster more connection.

    We have adapted a short version for other contexts too, such as for university students or schools wanting to foster more connection.  [link to workshop page].. 

    We will be especially happy to offer it to private businesses. We believe the corporate sector has a huge amount to offer and gain from tackling loneliness. As well as contributing positively to the wider issues around equality and economic growth, employers could solve many of the challenges they’re facing around staff wellbeing, productivity and retention with greater connection. (If you are interested in learning more about how connection and community can impact the workplace watch the recording of a discussion we hosted on Togetherness and Economics.

    • A deeper understanding of what loneliness is, it’s causes and the impact loneliness has on individuals, community and society

    • Being united behind a core framework, principles and language

    • A shared understanding which provides the foundations for collective action

    • Strong, authentic and lasting lasting relationships 

    • Creative solutions and/or an emerging action plan co-produced by the people in the room

    • Access to the 32 Steps to Togetherness resource - a manual of 32 practical steps we can all take to build connections within and between communities

Why host a workshop?

Support people to use the power of poetry to connect with themselves, as well as build understanding solidarity across communities.

Become part of a network of brilliant organisations and lovely people.

Build your capacity to put on poetry workshop.

We’d love to chat about whether a poetry workshop would work for you

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What do people say?

  • “The workshop that Civil Society Consulting ran for our department was accessible, engaging and thought provoking. Our team members left with more knowledge and a greater appreciation of the causes and effects of loneliness in society, specifically how it relates to our business context. Team members were very complimentary of the delivery and content of the workshop and we would have no hesitation in running this again. The team’s work in this area is vital in helping us to realise the vision that we have for our working environment and customer base. The workshop was a good step forward in helping us to get closer to realising the goals that we have set as an organisation.”

    Mike Chung, Head of Advice & Wellbeing, SOAS University of London

  • “Civil Society Consulting did a fabulous connections training session at Lincoln Bishop University this year. The participants included people from across the university and organisations across the city and county. Engaging such a wide-ranging group and bringing them together, working on connections and issues around isolation and loneliness, was valuable in itself, and in pointing us in the right direction to build communities and connections well into the future. I was most impressed, and I have worked on similar issues (in and beyond education) for many years.”

    Professor Julian Stern, Director of the World Religions and Education Research Unity, and President of the International Society for Research on Solitude, Lincoln Bishop University

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