Over the past few months, along with my Wind&Bones collaborator and co-director, Dr Will Buckingham, I’ve been working on a project in collaboration with the Bulgarian NGO, Emprove.

We’ve been delivering writing workshops to women survivors of domestic abuse, and generating some brilliant micro-stories (under 90 words!) for publication. The stories are going to be illustrated by some of Bulgaria’s top illustrators, and will form the basis for an exhibition at the Bulgarian National Gallery Kvadrat 500 in Sofia. Later in 2022 or early 2023, the stories will be published as an illustrated pack of cards, the stories themselves in parallel Bulgarian and English translation. And these cards can then be used as gifts, as provocations for training events, as conversation starters, or as things of beauty and inspiration to keep!

It has been challenging, moving, but also joyfully uplifting work. And this is only the start for this project. The project is a part of Emprove’s brilliant #ArtAwakens campaign, an array of cross-artform and multidisciplinary projects that explore different responses to domestic abuse.

You find out more about the project by downloading the project brochure on the Wind&Bones website.

With the next phases of the project, we’re intending to extend things beyond Bulgaria. We’re currently in discussion with the Bulgarian Cultural Institute in London, and with a range of other organisations, to explore how we take the project further. So if you have any ideas, or want to get involved, send me a message, and let’s talk more!