Maisha Stories: No place Like Home Workshops - Seven Sisters Country Park

Come share your stories of food, culture and hobbies with artists from Writing Our Legacy, Diversity Lewes and and The Rest Experience in this free workshop series exploring culture and heritage, and health and wellbeing at Seven Sisters Country Park.

• Each session will involve different creative writing and making opportunities
• The sessions will provide experience in oral storytelling, creative writing, and various visual arts
• We will also produce a book and an exhibition by the end using all work produced
• All sessions will be fun and open to all – no experience is necessary
• The workshops are aimed at BPOC people living, working or studying in Sussex.

Drinks and food will be provided. We recommend that you bring something to write with, such as a notebook, a laptop, paper and a pen, etc.

Workshop dates:

Sunday 14 September – Writing Our Memory Fields. Facilitator: Remi Graves

See info about how contacts & how to find the place here

Join us for a session Inspired by Jake Skeets' concept of ‘the memory field’; the idea that the land holds memories dear to us that are fundamental to our constructions of selfhood.In this session we will explore our own memory fields through writing and walking.We will make the most of the stunning Seven Sisters landscape to gather insights, images and to spark memories that we can delve into. As ever we will be thinking about ancestry, heritage, personal and collective memory.

The workshop is open to anyone of Global Majority who wants to try out poetry for the first time, delve deeper into their own stories or just collaborate with others in the community. Speakers of all languages are welcome, the workshop will be led in English, but there will be space for collaboration and multilingual writing!

Sun 28 Sept – Facilitators: Liz Ikamba

The venue and getting there:

The venue is the Pump Barn which is near to the Visitor Centre at Seven Sisters Country Park, situated at Exceat, near Seaford, East Sussex, BN25 4AD. More info here.

See photo of Visitor Centre below. We will be around, pointing people in the right direction, but you can always ask there where the Pump Barn is.

Please use public transport or car-share where possible as the Seven Sisters Country Park car park fills up fast. You can find more information on how to plan your journey here: sevensisters.org.uk/plan-your-visit/getting-here.

Seven Sisters and the Sussex Heritage Coast are popular destinations with local communities and tourists alike. In good weather, car parking is quickly full. Please note that parking is charged (£3 for up to 2 hours or £4 for a full day). There are two pay and display car parks.

Seven Sisters Country Park is well served by buses from Brighton/Seaford/Eastbourne, and from further along the coast. All buses stop at the Park entrance. There are regular rail services from London to Brighton, Seaford and Eastbourne.

View the timetable for the Coaster 12, 12A and 12X services.

There is a changing places facility next to the Visitor Centre. The car park also has designated disabled parking bays.

Please contact WOL if you have specific accessibility or further questions. Please contact us at info@writingourlegacy.org.uk.

About the artists

Liz Ikamba is a Congolese-British singer, artist and performer who weaves a personal, ancestral story into her music and creative work, narrating her heritage and experience as a dual-heritage woman and artist living in the UK.

She is also a trauma-informed creative facilitator with over twelve years of experience in community-development and participatory Arts practice. In more recent years, she has been particular interested in working to decolonise individual and collective conditioning around identity and race; to help unlock creative potential, and to inspire celebration of life in all it’s diversity.

Remi Graves is a poet and drummer. A former Barbican Young Poet, their work has been featured on BBC Radio 4, at St Paul's Cathedral and in various anthologies. Past commissions include ‘a well worn path’ for Arthouse Jersey and ‘On Breathing’ for Barbican. Remi has led courses at The Poetry School, Queercircle and facilitates in schools and local community spaces. Their debut pamphlet, 'with your chest', was published by fourteen poems in 2022. Remi won the inaugural 2024 Prototype Prize.

About Maisha Stories Project

From November 2024 to December 2025, we will work with Black, Asian and ethnically diverse people of colour (BPOC) communities based along the South Downs National Park and East Sussex to co-produce and co-deliver a series of 12 monthly storytelling and placemaking workshops in Brighton’s Moulsecoomb, Hastings and Lewes aimed at people of all ages and backgrounds including families.

Project partners are Writing Our Legacy (WOL) and Diversity Lewes and The Rest Experience and working with academic Dr Jess Moriarty. Look out for our updates on how you can get involved if you are living, working or studying in these areas.

The project builds on the Maisha Stories: No Place Like Home project devised in 2024 by Amy Zamarripa Solis (WOL), Tony Kalume (Diversity Lewes) and Dr Jess Moriarty and delivered with Akila Richards founder of The Rest Experience.

The project has delivered a workshop series in Lewes, supported by University of Brighton’s Community – University Partnership Programme and funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), AHRC Impact Account and Arts Council England.

The project has also delivered workshops, in partnership with Sussex Police, funded by IGNITE Acceleration fund and Policy Support Fund.

Why Maisha Stories?
In Swahili, the name Maisha represents the value, diversity, and beauty of life, the profound meaning of life and the energy, power, and essence of being. It is a name celebrated across African societies and more widely that inspires connections between human existence, nature and the whole community of life. It acknowledges these interconnections as precious and vital and should be celebrated.

Project Aims
The project seeks to connect individuals and build new communities. Storytelling, in particular, can be a catalyst for community, enabling people to share their lives and experiences and combating feelings of loneliness. We want to address the inequality of access to the natural environment in the UK.

See the rest of the workshops and locations:

Maisha Stories workshops - Hastings Library

Writing Our Legacy CIC is an arts and heritage organisation that enables Black, Asian and ethnically diverse/BPOC* people to tell their story through writing and the creative arts. We were established in 2012.

We give writers and other creatives a platform and community to feel supported, nurtured and evolve their work through the creative pipeline, from start to publication. We share stories and heritage of diaspora communities and bring them to life through various art forms for audiences to learn and take part in cultural heritage. We are an Arts Council England National Portfolio Organisation.