Led by Susmita Bhattacharya, the GHT Creative Writing Group offers a series of free writing workshops using our contemporary art programme as the stimulus for creativity. This workshop will focus on Josie Turnbull’s new commission Our Coffers Were Emptied to Pay for Your Pleasures. Beginners welcome!

About the Facilitator

Susmita Bhattacharya is an Indian-born writer whose debut novel, The Normal State of Mind (Parthian) was long-listed at the Mumbai Film Festival, 2018. Her short story collection, Table Manners (Dahlia Publishing) won the Saboteur Award for Best Short Story Collection and was serialised on BBC Radio 4 Extra. She mentors underrepresented writers through the Middle Way Mentoring Scheme and is co-founder of the Write Beyond Borders Mentoring Project and the ACE funded ‘Bridges not Borders’ project. She is a multidisciplinary artist who does several writing and art projects in schools and the community in the Solent region.

About the Artist

Josie is a multi-disciplinary artist and young people’s artist educator currently based in London. She completed an MA in Fine Art and Science at Central Saint Martins in 2022, following a number of years living in Ho Chi Minh City. Recent public presentations include a sculpture and short film commission as part of a cross disciplinary collective within the AHRC funded ‘Rethinking Fables’ project (2025), a commission by Shape Arts for ‘Open All Hours’, 198 Gallery, London (2023) ‘Open All Hours’, 198 Gallery, London (2023) and ‘Saline Shock!’ (solo), Orleans House Gallery London (2023). Also in 2023, she was awarded an Arts Council England DYCP grant to fund her international research on the Arowana fish, and was shortlisted for the UAL Sculpture/Clifford Chance Award. Selected residencies include the ‘Transcultural Collaboration – Shared Campus Semester’ in Zurich, Singapore and Yogyakarta (2022) UAL’s ‘Making Waves Scientist in Residence Program’ (2022), and was artist in residence at School360 Primary School (2021-2022).

Workshop: GHT Creative Writing Group