Poetry, Place, and Shared Experience
On Thursday 14th May, survivors, support organisations, and members of the wider community came together at Endeavour House in Torquay for the My Voice Matters – Peer Research Project & Legacy Listening Event, hosted by Devon Rape Crisis & Sexual Abuse Services.
This was the first time Focused Light had worked with Devon Rape Crisis, and it was an absolute pleasure to meet so many different people working together to create a safe and supportive environment.
The event created space for survivors to be heard through lived experience, creativity, conversation, and community connection. Focused Light was honoured to contribute by facilitating both a collaborative Polaroid photography workshop and a poetry workshop, led by a mixed group of survivors of child sexual abuse and domestic abuse survivors.
The workshops encouraged participants to explore creativity as a tool for expression, understanding, and connection. Rather than focusing on technical ability or creating the “perfect” image, the sessions centred around personal interpretation, shared experience, and gentle conversation.
Creating Safe Community Spaces
The poetry workshop, hosted by poet Richard Green, explored ideas around place, what it is like to live in Torquay, and how environment can shape identity and belonging. Participants reflected together through conversation and writing prompts, with discussions naturally shaping the emotional direction of the work created during the session.
Using the conversations, reflections, and written responses from the workshop, Richard later shaped the collective words into a poem.
At the legacy event, Richard read the workshopped poetry aloud to a room full of listeners. The reading was both emotional and powerful, capturing not only the words themselves but also the atmosphere, honesty, and shared discussion that had emerged throughout the workshop. Listening to the poetry being spoken publicly highlighted how creativity can carry lived experience in ways that feel both personal and collective at the same time.
Listen to Richard read the poem:
Alongside the poetry workshop, Focused Light facilitated a collaborative Polaroid photography workshop centred around a series of carefully chosen words connected to both survivorship and resilience. Words explored themes such as strength, safety, connection, signs, rootedness, and wellbeing, encouraging participants to interpret them through their own perspective and experience.
Participants first captured images on their phones before selecting photographs that felt most meaningful to them. These were then printed as Polaroids, allowing the images to become physical objects that could be held, arranged, and brought together collaboratively.
The completed photographs were placed into a collective grid, creating a communal artwork that reflected both the original creative brief and the wider sense of survivors coming together supportively. The arrangement of the images represented a shared space of protection, connection, and understanding, individual experiences held safely within a wider collective environment.
Introducing Focused Light
The event also provided an opportunity to introduce attendees to the wider supportive community offered through Focused Light workshops and activities.
Focused Light offers creative workshops and supportive community spaces for male survivors of childhood sexual abuse. Using a wide range of processes including photography, creative writing, illustration, Warhammer painting, blacksmithing, whittling, and shared artistic practice, the project aims to reduce isolation, build confidence, create conversation, and gently challenge shame through connection and expression.
The workshops are designed to be accessible and non-judgemental spaces where there is no expectation to perform or explain personal experiences. Participants can engage as much or as little as they wish.
One of the most powerful aspects of the project is the sense of peer understanding that develops naturally over time. Many survivors spend years masking emotions or feeling disconnected from others. Community spaces such as these offer opportunities to step away from isolation and exist alongside people who simply “get it” without needing lengthy explanation.
A New Woodland Community Hub
Focused Light is now moving into a new phase of the project through a developing partnership with a local woodland space in North Devon.
The woodland has allocated a dedicated area for the group to create and build a community hub, including a shelter and communal cooking area. Currently, the site is a blank canvas, offering opportunities for survivors to collectively shape the space together over time.
The long-term vision is to create a survivor-led environment rooted in practical activity, creativity, conversation, and shared ownership. Alongside creative workshops, future sessions may include whittling, blacksmithing, woodland crafts, cooking over the fire, and collaborative building projects.
Importantly, the woodland space is not about productivity or pressure. It is about creating somewhere people can feel grounded, welcomed, and connected, whether actively participating in activities or simply sitting quietly within the space.
The Importance of Survivor-Led Spaces
Throughout the Torquay event there was a strong sense of care, gentleness, and understanding. Conversations unfolded naturally as people engaged with creative work, research findings, and one another throughout the day.
Events such as My Voice Matters are important because they centre survivors’ voices directly. They create opportunities not only for stories to be heard, but for survivors to lead, facilitate, create, and shape supportive communities together.
Focused Light would like to thank Devon Rape Crisis & Sexual Abuse Services, and every survivor who contributed to the event through creativity, conversation, and presence.
Events such as this remind survivors that their voices matter, their experiences are valid, and that supportive community spaces can exist without judgement or expectation.
