Available Courses

Some writers view tarot as beautiful and liberating, a way to relax and explore the unconscious, and cite specific ways tarot has helped to offset writers’ block

Tarot is becoming more common as a tool for reflection. Many people have a practice of pulling a card every morning to help them feel centered and to engage more deeply with whatever happens that day. A lot of writers pull cards for their characters, or for direction when they feel stuck in their writing.

My latest course offering at the Community House is Writing for Wellness. Click here for details

Time: 10.00am – 12.30pm
Date: Mondays, 19 July to 23 September
Where: Castlemaine Community House
Instructor: Heather Blakey

Pens, crayons, pencils and IV tubes may not seem to have much in common but the arts are increasingly touted as a form of healing that can be as relevant to a patients wellbeing as medication. A developing body of research shows that expressive writing helps calm the mind and emotions, and increases feelings of happiness and wellbeing.

In this course we will use guided writing activities as a gentle approach to personal wellbeing. You will be offered tools which you can take away and use in your daily writing and art practice.

The enjoyable and easy-to-do activities will help you:

• reunite with your most creative self
• dip into Mnemosynes Well of Memory using simple lists as stepping stones
• apply guided imageries and visual imagery as a kick starter to daily writing
• alter your perspective by communicating with fragments of nature
• experience the catharsis that comes with writing letters to past and future selves
• create detailed portraitures
• explore a range of emotions

I am offering the Left of Centre Memoir course at the Community House in Castlemaine in February. Click here for details.

In collaboration with the Goldfields library, as a part of the Bendigo Carers project, I am offering a three week Art of Letter Writing Course

In collaboration with the Goldfields Library I am offering a 4 week Memoir Writing Course

 In collaboration with the Goldfields Library I am currently offering a one hour session about how to create a bullet journal in Instagram

Art of Visual Journal Keeping run in collaboration with the Goldfields Library Corporation July – August 2020

Footnote: The Art of Visual Journalling course proved to be very successful. Not everyone kept journals as a result but feedback from Barry showed that the course, and perhaps the notion of choosing to travel in our own backyard, ignited a creative endeavour. He wrote to me saying that “although I couldn’t quite get my head around it all, I was inspired to go out & take some photographs around central Victoria.  I began wondering about the early local history, imagining being there in the gold rush days, thinking what it would be like to be a horse tethered to a puddler machine, how it was for women & children, the political struggles of the miners etc.” This is the video this Banjo enthusiast went on to make. Enjoy!

The Great Escape – Intensive Journal Writing

This course was offered at the Castlemaine Community House in October 2019.

Lived Experience Narrative 

Telling the stories of our lives through writing and art is a part of human experience. Of recent times the use of expressive art to enhance our health and wellbeing has become the focus of communities and individuals across the globe. Having a narrative and taking the time to reshape narratives has proven to be a healing experience for many. Changing perspectives by listening to the perspectives of others has also been shown to be a good thing. Apart from anything it helps generate new ideas.