Free Word

"We laugh bent double, tears in our eyes, though the laughing don’t laugh out the sadness. We laugh until our shoulders pulse to breathless sobs. Taste the salt from our eyes and sweet from our nostrils. Shake off the shame flaked like dead skin around us. Sweep what the wind is too weak to carry. Keep a small mound for the corner shrine, to wonder on how that dust was first a fist, a heavy silence, rejection and fight." Listen to Writer, Poet and Musician Brother Portrait's piece 'Hold Me...

"I was thinking a lot about mindfulness. How it can help with noticing when we are being cruel to ourselves which then leads us to gently adjust ourselves back to kind thoughts. I think mindfulness can be a great teacher of kindness as it requires one to be radically honest with themselves in order to become mindful of one's full self and surroundings. In this poem the shadow is that part of the poet that is confronted with this personal radical truth that shows the hard emotional and...

Enjoy this podcast with Creative Strategist Suzanne Alleyne and CEO & Artistic Director of Eclipse Theatre, Amanda Huxtable, exploring how preconceptions of how ‘success’ and ‘power’ affect our mindsets. This conversation draws on neurology to begin to explore what is happening in our brains when we acquire or lose power and what this might mean for our own power and agency. Part of Free Word's Finding Power In Isolation season. freeword.org @freewordcentre

A poem by Talia Randall. Household Father’s beard is a swarm of bees. Brother can’t remember which teenage mutant turtle is which. Sister builds an igloo out of choc-ices. Mother pays for everything. The stray cat visits and eats tuna off the posh china. Father calls the cat Jeremy. Father sees himself in Jeremy. Sister sees herself in brother. Brother sees himself in the TV. Mother realises she left herself in the old country. On the night they get cable they invite the neighbours round for...

The UK is facing a housing crisis unlike anything seen in recent history. Priced out of their homes and unable to secure permanent housing, Generation Rent are unable to put down roots in their communities. Change is long overdue. Listen back to an incendiary night of poetry and reflection from Spread the Word’s Young People’s Laureate Theresa Lola, poets Amaal Said and Seraphima Kennedy and illustrator Olivia Twist.

Immerse yourself in this digital sound installation as poet Amina Jama takes you through a 1990s migrant Somali living room paying homage to the rich Somali culture, Black Britishness, migration, and the creativity that arises from displacement. Grab a cup of tea and make yourself comfortable… #WritingOurWayHome Twitter/Instagram/Facebook @freewordcentre freeword.org

Listen back to the launch of Somali-British writer Amina Jama’s debut poetry collection, exploring the legacy of poetry and art, and the ways we are influenced by the voices that have come before us. Edited by Jacob Sam-La Rose and published by Flipped Eye, A Warning To The House That Holds Me responds to the work of Safia Ehillio, Hanif Abdurraqib, Ocean Vuong, Caroline Bird and most prominently Frida Kahlo. Amina Jama draws on experiences of home, autonomy and passage, writing in...

How do explorations of our personal histories inform our understanding of home? Rathbones Folio Prize and Ted Hughes Award-winning poet Raymond Antrobus, multi-award-winning poet and memoirist Hannah Lowe and acclaimed writer, historian and producer Colin Grant have all written compellingly about their fathers’ experiences emigrating from Jamaica to the UK. How have they interpreted these shared, yet distinct, family stories in their work, and how has it shaped them as writers? Listen back...

Our country is in the middle of a housing emergency. Failure to provide enough social homes is the root cause of the housing emergency. Yet the number of social homes being built is at its lowest for 70 years with over one million households on the waiting list. We need to fix the broken housing system. Listen back to the conversation with housing and homelessness charity Shelter featuring the first dedicated LGBTQI+ crisis and community centre The Outside Project, author Luan Goldie, poet...

"I know it’s all a matter of rebuilding one’s life. In many ways it’s a matter of surviving and living under another sun, but how was I to do that?" Listen back to this conversation with writers Long Litt Woon and Zakiya Mckenzie, exploring the power of nature as a source of healing and belonging. #WritingOurWayHome Twitter/Instagram/Facebook @freewordcentre freeword.org

Diaspora is Whitechapel, Bradford, Southall, Wilmslow Road and Alum Rock; diaspora is the memes we share, the turns of phrases we use, the languages we speak and don’t speak. Listen back to an excerpt taken from Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan's brand new performance piece on a world beyond origins. At a time when nation states throughout the West are struggling to make sense of their diasporic populations and defining them as ‘other’, where the rhetoric of ‘go back to where you came from’ echoes...

With press freedom under greater threat around the world now than ever before, an increasing number of journalists are finding themselves exiled from their home countries, forced to flee for their safety to avoid violent attacks, torture, or lengthy imprisonment in retaliation for their reporting. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) UK Bureau Director Rebecca Vincent,Turkish journalist and activist Ege Dündar, editor of Al-Hudood Isam Uraiqat and British-Iranian journalist Rana Rahimpour join to...

What power does literature have in hostile environments? Can it do more than describe homes and spaces of belonging –– can it create them? In a society overwhelmed with questions of who has the right to be heard and who doesn’t, can literature strengthen threatened communities? Black British writers Roger Robinson, Winsome Pinnock, Inua Ellams, Bridget Minamore reflect on writing and resistance with Wasafiri. @freewordcentre #WritingOurWayHome freeword.org

How do you self care and develop your career at the same time? Are you constantly feeling like your self-care has to take second place to your career? As individuals how do we self care whilst maintaining both our career development and professional persona? As an organisation how do you support employee self-care and enhance your business? This podcast addresses a question that has become increasingly difficult in the current economic, social and political climate. Featuring: Arts Council...

Bald Black Girl(s) is a multi-disciplinary project created by poet, producer and visual artist Ruth Sutoyé, which centres the narratives of black women who choose to shave their heads, and explores perceptions of masculinity, femininity and androgyny alongside sexuality, gender identity and barbershop dynamics. Twitter/Instagram/Facebook @freewordcentre freeword.org

#AllTheWaysWeCouldGrow Instagram/Twitter/Facebook: @freewordcentre freeword.org

Novels arrive on bookshelves as if they were always whole and perfect. But what is kept hidden from view? And what is the effect of keeping that process – the scenes from the cutting room floor, the false starts, the dead ends and failed drafts – hidden? Writers Wyl Menmuir, Fiona Melrose and Amer Anwar joined for a no holds barred look at the notebooks, graphs, sketches and scribbles no one ever gets to see. Twitter/Instagram/Facebook @freewordcentre freeword.org

The sound of the Qur’an read aloud is a cultural signifier used across media and the arts to indicate the presence of Muslims and of Islamic religious expression. But how often do you hear the Qur’an recited in public by someone who isn’t a man? Marking both International Women’s Day 2019, and the first event of All The Ways We Could Grow, Inclusive Mosque Initiative (IMI), supported by Free Word, presents a discussion on the significance of recitation as a tradition of liturgy and the...

After a free CryptoParty London workshop, a panel of experts explore the intricacies of digital security.

In a post-Brexit world, how should we treat the legacy of the British Empire? We partnered with race equality organisation Runnymede Trust for the final event in our first season, curating a debate that takes an uncensored look at Britain’s colonial past and the narratives that are used to construct legacies while eliminating certain histories. Our panellists included rapper and activist Lowkey, journalist and author David Goodhart, Professor of Postcolonial and Decolonial Studies Dr...