Write to Life is the therapeutic creative writing group at Freedom from Torture Since Sheila began running it ten years ago, the group has progressed from a bit of writing for internal consumption to collaborations with Tate Britain and Modern, Universal Music, Carmen Elektra Opera, Tamasha and Ice&Fire Theatres, the National Theatre studio, Feast on the Bridge, the Edinburgh Literary Festival and many more. Read more about their extraordinary lives and achievements, and how the work is done, here.
‘The A-Z of Poverty’
This film emerged from a piece of devastating research by the charity Freedom from Torture into the effects of poverty and the asylum system that produces it, on its clients and ex clients. We wanted to put a human face on teh statistics, so the members of its writing group, Write to Life, wrote 26 pieces, one for each letter of the alphabet, which we published in 2015. Nine of the writers were brave enough to tell these stories on video; this is the result.
Words and Music
This is the story of two young composers who did just that, for clients of Freedom from Torture whom they had never met. How they imagined themselves into the survivors' worlds, and what the authors made of them, are the subject of this short film
Finding a Voice
A group of refugees and asylum seekers, survivors of torture from around the world, attend a master class in theatre performance that unlocks their storytelling skills and enables them to share their poems and life stories with the world.