Choice of three dates:

Tuesday 7 July at 10.00 a.m. to 12.30 p.m.

Wednesday 15 July at 2.00 p.m. to 4.30 p.m.

Friday 24 July at 10.00 a.m. to 12.30 p.m.

Each will be held via Zoom and available to 12 people.

Please email Wendy Tozer if you have any questions: w.j.tozer@sussex.ac.uk

Listening well can have a profound effect on how an individual being listened to feels and can also help them to think more clearly. At no time is it more important to listen well than when someone is in distress or needs to talk about something difficult.

Being a good listener is a skill that improves with practice and is a skill, which we can use, every day in our interactions with students and with each other.

Learn to Listen is a two-and-a-half-hour interactive workshop which is available to all University of Sussex staff and will be delivered by skilled volunteers from Brighton, Hove and District Samaritans.

Due to the positive response from staff who attended our May “learn to listen” workshop delivered by The Samaritans, we are going to hold three more in July when hopefully you’ve got more time to come along.

These are some of the comments we received about the last workshop:

“It was fabulous! I've been practising my active listening on the kids and it even works with them!”

“I thought the workshop was perfectly pitched for an online session! “

“I thoroughly enjoyed the "Learn to listen" workshop and would recommend it to my colleagues. It had a good combination of principles and practice so the 2.5 hours passed really fast. Having it done online made no difference to me - I had no technical issues with watching/hearing the lecture and the breakout room worked well to allow working in pairs.”

The workshop draws on methods that have been developed by Samaritans over 67 years. It introduces techniques that can be used to help students or colleagues who might be experiencing emotional distress, overload or even suicidal thoughts.

By the end of the workshop, you will know more about why listening matters and how to listen well. You will have practiced using a range of methods, developing confidence to help others feel supported and heard. You will each take away a copy of the workshop slides and the main tool from the workshop, the Listening Wheel.

To read more about what the Samaritans do, go to www.samaritans.org/brighton

For confidential support, call them free on 116 123, email jo@samaritans.org

They are currently unable to run their drop-in at: Dubarry House, Newtown Road, Hove BN3 6AE - 10am-10pm, but hope to open it again later on in the year.