Imaginarium Homing

Imaginarium Homing is an in-person and online programme that encourages you to come home to yourself.

Run by Sarah Hymas and Katherine Zeserson from October 2026 to March 2027, this Imaginarium is inspired by noticing how the cycles of nature enable us to notice cycles in ourselves.

All life begins in the dark. The light stimulates growth.

The present multi-crises call on us to ground ourselves and honour our place in the world, in the face of dissonance, violence and despair. By tapping into your embodied knowing, you’ll become reacquainted with your passions, skills and capacities. You will be guided through a process which will refresh, reorientate and renew yourself within the world. This reacquaintance builds confidence in what you can offer yourself, your community and the wider world, without overcommitting or feeling guilty. The aspiration is to enable you to live with a ‘firm persuasion’, as Blake has it.

Working with our creative, physical and spiritual bodies, we will write, make, sing, move, reflect, discuss, walk, explore and unpack what rises within us as we travel.

Our work draws on the knowledge of Joanna Macy, adrienne maree brown’s thinking around Emergent Strategy, and bell hooks, as well as permaculture principles, coaching techniques, improvisation and other creative loosening practices.

Details
The process begins with a four night retreat in Yorkshire. There you will be given space and a mix of directed and free-style activities to remember what you love to do and how to be, and begin to build a small community of like-minded people who want to support others as part of their learning.

Over the following four months we’ll spend three sessions together online, embedding new habits into our daily / weekly practices, and nourishing our connections with ourselves and the others in this Imaginarium and our wider communities.

Our final session together in this Imaginarium is a daylong in-person gathering in South Cumbria. This will be a gently activating day of talk, play, fire and food.

Dates
19 – 21 October: in-person residential: Giggleswick, Yorkshire
23 November: 7-9 pm Zoom
18 January: 7-9 pm Zoom
22 February: 7-9 pm Zoom
22 March: in-person 10 – 5: Storth, South Cumbria

Who’s it for
Anyone who’s wanting (trying / struggling / needing ) to create in this time of dissonance. Any writer, musician, maker, creative practitioner of any genre or experience who would benefit from giving and receiving the nourishment of time and time out.

Price
£800. This includes, three nights accommodation and food in Yorkshire, with all activities, plus three x 2 hour zoom sessions and a final in person day with lunch and a fire in South Cumbria

To book a spot
There are eight places on this Imaginarium.
Email us by 11th May with a short EoI of why you’d like to join this Imaginarium.
sehymas [at] gmail.com & katherine [at] zeserson.com
We use these to draw together a diverse group of people. Please also tell us if you would like to be considered for a bursary, or if you feel able to give a donation to support another person’s place.

Imaginarium Power

This online Imaginarium is focused on the power we hold as writers, the power dynamics in what we’re writing, the power of words, and the variable power of voice and form.

To align ourselves with the power of our sun, this Imaginarum runs from one equinox to the other: March – September. Meeting monthly on Mondays at 7pm (BST).

Over each two hour session, we’ll be exploring:

how to tap into our personal power – our aspirations and intentions for ourselves as writers;
what power is displayed through our ideas and / or our characters, how it is used, misused, exploited and applied in the plots and structures of our work;
the inherent power of the words we choose and how we use them;
the power of publishing and our power as editor and gatekeepers for our work. This final topic will invite you to make a multiple zine or artistbook from a piece of work (using Canva free for those who want).

Who’s it for?
Open to writers of all genres and experiences.

The sessions will support you to:
* increase your faith in yourself, creative processes and writing
* connect with other writers in a supportive and inclusive community
* explore the complexities of power dynamics in your writing
* open up your thinking at a later stage of a project, or find news ways into capturing fresh ideas and experiences
* make an artistbook / zine to explore news ways of editing and presenting some of your writing
* have fun and play

Format

We’ll meet monthly, online for 2 hour sessions.
You’ll be sent a pack of papery delights in advance of the programme, then ongoing digital worksheets / provocations full of questions and invitations in advance of each monthly meet.
A one-to-one coaching/mentoring session with me can be face to face (in Lancaster / Kendal area), online or phone during or after the programme.

More info on the ethos of an Imaginarium is here

Session Dates
From March 17^th, we’ll meet online on the third Monday of each month (except June, when we meet 9^th)
Online meeting dates:
17^th March
21^st April
19^th May
9^th June
21^st July
18^th August
15^th September

Cost
There are three self-selecting bands:
£270 full; £190 mid-range; £90 concs; 1 free bursary place is available.
This includes all sessions, resources and an optional one to one tutorial.
Please choose whichever band feels most affordable to your current situation

To sign up*
There are 10 places.
As usual, to collate a diverse and engaged group of people I ask you send a brief email with an Expression of Interest.
Please email – sehymas@gmail [dot] com – by February 19^th
with:
1. A couple of sentences on your writing experience and interest in participating*
2. Which fee band you’ll be paying
3. Any access needs
4. Any questions
*This is not about me deciding how good your work is, more an ambition to create a mix of genres, experiences and perspectives for the group.

DreamingWritingZiningPlace

An in-person Imaginarium of creative text-mapping

Friday 4th – Sunday 6th April *

Blackhall Mill Community Centre, Blackhall Mill, Gateshead, NE17 7TL
Non-residential, with delicious, wholesome vegetarian meals provided

Dive deep into rural Gateshead and unearth some of its many voices. Experience the freedom and playfulness of writing as a physical practice, and explore zines as a way to edit, focus and find the potential of text.

Curious? It’s for people who like to play with words and connect with place. It’s for writers interested moving beyond the flat page to explore text as visual and spatial. It’s for visual artists / practitioners looking to deepen their text-based work.

Over the weekend we will
• capture our relations with this wild, ex-industrial land through words
• explore the intersection of personal, social and ecological worlds
• make either a one-off zine or a prototype for multiples
• form a temporary creative community to nourish and inform our individual creative spirits

*6.30 – 9.pm Friday, 10 – 6.30 Saturday, 10 – 3 Sunday

Cost
£150: this covers working in a small group with individual attention, and a post workshop one to one,; as well as supper Friday, lunch and high tea Saturday and lunch Sunday.
There are a limited number of places available at a reduced price.

To sign up
— email me – sehymas at gmail.com – with a line or two about what interests you in the weekend
— your current creative practice / experience / aspiration
— whether you can pay full price, or if a bursary would make it possible for you to attend

The 10 places will be allocated on a first come first served basis.
A nonrefundable deposit is required by beginning of March.

Worlds in Progress Retreat

Worlds in Progress

A four day/ five night Creative Retreat
facilitated by Sarah Hymas & Katherine Zeserson

Monday 4th – Saturday 9th January 2026
At Woodlands House, Giggleswick. North Yorkshire, BD24 0AX

For those who work and play with words – writers, singers, songwriters, zine or artist book makers, embroiderers, vocal artists, performers, and – and – with a work in progress, who would benefit from time out of the usual routine, to spend time alone and with others on a similar path. (see this for reasons why being around people can be a Good Thing)

This space will support the building of the worlds in our work; future worlds through our work; and a temporary world over the week.

A beautiful balance of together time, cooking, preparing and clearing up together and the normality and extraordinariness of that, snippets of stories, progress, insecurities presenting and being allowed space, gratitude shared with strangers, moments of exhilaration as ideas bubbled and boiled to the surface, care, love, connection.

This is not a taught course. It is a holding space for exploration, sharing and connection. It is a place to be safe to concentrate on, and expand our faith in, our work, individually and collectively. It’s a time to stop, reflect on your practice, gather yourself, recharge and regenerate.

This is an invitation to be generous with your creative spirit, to invest in the transformative power of giving out and seeing how it comes back differently and enriches you in the process. Bring a willingness to learn, to not know and be open.

Each day includes time solo and together, plus shared veggie/ vegan meals (evening meals will be on a cooking rota).

There will be plenty of time for you to spend with your own work, be inspired by the quiet and space, as well as be stimulated by the conversations and the internal and external worlds around you.

Optional facilitated activities include creative explorations, play, guided meditation, walks, and singing.

We invite you to make this an alcohol-free week

An opportunity to be in community with others from different creative backgrounds (whom I wouldn’t normally meet or come across in my everyday life) and the chance to share talents, experiences and ideas. A chance to focus on my writing without disturbance or distraction.

Venue
Everyone will have a room of their own. Some with en suite.
There are two accessible rooms on the ground floor.
Nearest train stations: Giggleswick or Settle.
There’s room for parking

Arrival: 1700 Monday 4th January
Departure: 1130 Saturday 9th January

Cost
£600, inclusive of all food, accommodation and activities
There are 10 participant places. We can offer a limited number of discounted places. Please get in touch if you’d like to discuss a bursary.
If you are able to pay more, to cover the cost of more bursaries, let us know.

Who we are
Sarah Hymas, writer, maker, facilitator and collaborator, has been running The Writer’s Imaginarium and other creative workshops and retreats for over thirty years. Through all her work she seeks to strengthen the connections between us, and unearth the joy in sharing collective creative spaces.

Katherine Zeserson is a singer, writer, coach and facilitator. She works with individuals, groups and organisations to build clarity and insight, driven by a passionate belief in the essential role of creative and reflective practices for making a kinder, fairer world.

How to Express Your Interest in Coming Along
email by 1st June: katherine [at] zeserson.com & sehymas [at] gmail.com
with the subject: Worlds in Progress Residency
Include, briefly (in the body of the email):

Why you’d like to join us for the week
What roughly you might be working on (we appreciate things change)
Anything you’d like to offer the group during the week, either of your practice or some joyful activity that supports your practice. (This is optional, and can be spontaneous if you are so moved during the week)
If you absolutely need a desk in your room.
Any dietary requirements or allergies you have.
Other specific needs you’d like us to know about.
Whether you’re able to pay £600 standard, need a bursary, or can pay more towards the cost of another bursary

We’ll need 50% deposit to confirm your place as early as possible.
And the balance to be paid by the middle of October.

Cancellation policy: We can only return your payment if someone else is able to take your place

Extra Details

Couples are welcome to share a room. Both would be still required to pay full price
Given that we’ll be working in close proximity we ask that your practice is considerate to others.
There is wi-fi at the house
Do email with any Qs

It gave me lots of moments of joy, a space to work, a space to play with all the other fab retreatants, space to be on my own, space to be in the beauty of the place, and shared laughter.

Imaginarium Earth

Imaginarium Earth is a six month editorial programme for writers with an early draft wanting a new and supportive way of editing their work

Who’s it for?

Any writer, of any genre, any subject, looking for a new / supportive community alongside whom to edit / redraft a body of work*

who can commit to most of the fortnightly Monday night online sessions
who wants to go from being in the dark to having a clearer view of a particular project
who enjoys discussion and engaging with other people’s work as much as their own, seeing that as a way to enrich their own process
who has love and respect for the earth and is wanting to enfold that relationship into their writing / editing process.

You do not need to be writing a nature-based work, or refer to the natural world explicitly within the writing.

* A ‘body of work’ refers to a pamphlet or more of poems, a collection or bundle of short stories, a 20+ min script, a piece of prose 15k + words in length, or some other longer length work

Aims

Turn an early (possibly messy) draft into something more coherent.
Build confidence and joy in the editorial stage.
See the earth as a teacher of creativity, and build on the six elements for creative experimentation.
Keep the creative spirit alive and fresh throughout the redrafting process.

You will be invited to

Draw on the earth’s processes to guide your editorial process
Reset your perception of your work through a wider reset of perceptions towards the world you inhabit
Become a part of a small community of committed writers each editing their work
Hold an expansive view of your ideas, influences and processes, while making focused edits on your work

Format

We’ll meet fortnightly, online for 90 minute sessions. These will alternate between peer feedback and more wide-ranging discussions on process and keeping going
Interim worksheets / provocations full of questions and invitations
An inclusive hour long one-to-one coaching/mentoring session with me, which could be face to face (in Lancaster area), online or phone.
More info on the ethos of an Imaginarium is here

Session dates
All sessions run 7-8:30pm, Monday nights, on zoom.
Intro session: 18th Dec;
Earth: 15th & 29th Jan;
Air: 12th & 26th Feb;
Space: 11th & 25th March
Fire: 8th & 22nd April
Water: 6th & 20th May
Consciousness: 3rd & 17th June

Cost

There are three self-selecting bands:
£270 full; £150 mid-range; £90 concs; 1 free bursary place is available.
This includes all sessions, resources and an optional one to one tutorial.
Please choose whichever band feels most affordable to your current situation

Expressions of Interest

There are 8 places. Unlike previous years I’m definitely capping at 8 (!)
If you’d like to join this Imaginarium, please email me sehymas [at] gmail.com
with:
1. A rough outline of the draft project, including its genre and subject matter, you want to work on between Dec 23 and June 24*
2. Which fee band you’ll be paying
3. Any access needs
4. Any questions
*This is not about me deciding how good your work is, more an ambition to create a mix of genres for the group.

Please send your interest by 16th November at the latest and I’ll get back to you asap.

Awards

2021 Ledbury Munthe Second Collection Prize for Poetry. Shortlisted. ‘melt’
2020 BlackSunflowers Poetry inaugural pamphlet competition. Winner. ‘the hispering’
2019 AHRC-funded PhD. Liverpool University. ‘Becoming Ocean: On the Marine Lyric’
2019 UK Forward Prize for Poetry. Highly Commended. ‘Whale Bone Corset and Other Relics’
2018 Ivan Juritz Prize for Creative Experiment. Shortlisted. ‘Recovery’
2016 Hinterland Inaugural Nonfiction Competition. Shortlisted. ‘This Wall’
2016 Dot Award New Media Prize. Shortlisted. ‘Ripple’
2014 International New Media Writing Prize. Shortlisted. ‘Tales from the Towpath’

Imaginarium by Not-Writing

This is a laboratory into the art of writing by not-writing*.

It’s for any writer / artist / enthusiast wanting to begin a project, who wants a fresh way of looking at it, or someone halfway through one, wanting a new route through it. It’s for those who want to resist the inclination to write and produce tons of words, to expand expressing their ideas and experience in non-linguistical ways. Not-writing, especially for those of us who are habitually inclined to write regularly, allows ideas, images, themes and narratives to cook in a different chronology, take shape in an alternative form, split and slip down unexpected streams.

This Imaginarium first aired in the Summer of 2021 in the northern hemisphere, as Imaginarum Summer. It’s now available as a pdf for any time of the year, and invites you to put writing to one side, out of the spotlight, or even on hold for a few weeks, and see what happens when you allow yourself alternative creative interactions.

You’ll explore what happens if you embark on a project, or a section of a project, without writing. What fills the gap that was occupied with words? How do you voice your interactions with the world, your hopes, fears and stories? And what then happens when you return to language as your creative expression?

Format (approximate to the pdf)

Provocations and inspirations, emailed as a pdf every Monday throughout August, invite you to explore your project idea or preoccupations without writing. Each pdf comes with mp3 note-making-not-writing accompaniment to provide an almost writing space for those who don’t want to go completely nonlinguistic.
The time commitment for each week is entirely up to you. You could spend half an hour in response to the provocations, or you could dive in for a day a week, or anything in between.

Cost

The pdf, with chat, provocations and links to audios, is downloadable. Please send your donation using paypal and I’ll send you a link to the pdf. As with the Imaginarium Solo pdf, all monies will go to The Morecambe Bay Poverty Truth Commission Hardship Fund

*The art of writing without writing acknowledges its debt to Bruce Lee in Enter the Dragon and follows the ethics of nonseparation.

How we do anything is how we do everything

This programme, like all Imaginariums, rises from my own practice. It is guided by the desire to maintain a sense of self as writer during those times when you aren’t writing much or happily or with conviction.

I believe in the diversity of the creative moment, that the impetus and connection I experience through writing isn’t limited to the setting down of words. The creative flow, elemental to my writing, runs through many other activities, and inactivities. The fluidity and potency of tired or wavering creative energy can be revitalised, rediscovered or redirected when instead of writing I’m not-writing with intention.

To let go of words, temporarily, allows other seams of creativity to emerge from any given moment, and invites the body to lead the mind in nourishing encounters with our imagination. This Imaginarium intends to stitch words into one layer among many in your creative process.

I read ‘how we do anything…’ in Tom Waites’ book Innocent When You Dream years ago. I was initially horrified at the thought that my cavalier DIY style was how I write. That my botch-it paint job was analogous to editing a poem. Now I’m not sure it’s that straightforward. I think it’s about intention, and how I approach painting can teach me how I can approach adding shade or new colour in a chapter. Pulling ingredients together to make a cake can offer a new methodology for thinking about a seemingly unrelated bunch of images.

This Imaginarium will be food for your writerly practice. Food as nourishment and food as fuel. It offers the space for you to consider your creative practice through one endeavour to another. Your creative impetus will roam freely across form and time in a way words might not grant. It might even show you ways of sustaining your creativity when short of time for writing, or headspace for words.

For more info on the Spirit of the Imaginarium, see the main Imaginarium page or a post I wrote for Climate Cultures

What people said about the last online Writer’s Imaginarium

a think-tank for writers … a safe, encouraging environment … hugely inspiring … brain-expanding … gave me so many new approaches to writing … an other world. Quiet. Sacred. Beautiful. Intelligent. Deeply inspiring …

Imaginarium Solo

An easy to use, easy to riff off, writer’s guide to kickstart a new writing project, picking up the threads of an old one, or tinkering with an unfledged idea. The Imaginarium Solo offers a space for you to play, think, listen and write around an idea – word, image, or story – that just won’t let you go, with the intention of ripening it at a pace that suits you.

Four audio provocations, embedded within the guide, will prompt you through an accumulative writing process. For run through the guide, start to finish, probably takes about six hours. This, of course, can be broken up to fit with your life. As with all Imaginariums, Solo is based on my own processes and designed to encourage imagining, creating and writing for all genres. It’s for those who would like an invisible companion / gentle provocateur as they write

You choose the cost: from £5 – £25. Pay below and I’ll email a link to the digital guide. While you can print it off for your use, you will need to be online to click through to the audio files that are the writing guides embedded in the pdf.

All monies will go to The Morecambe Bay Poverty Truth Commission Hardship Fund

If you’re strapped for cash, email me. I’m happy to share this for free with anyone whose financial situation is an obstacle to their writing.

And if you’d rather write in company, then maybe the Imaginarium Online is more your thing. If there isn’t one pending, then sign up to my very infrequent newsletter to hear of the next one.

June 17, 2020August 18, 2020

One Day Plus

Here you’ll find all the offline provocations for our One Day Plus Imaginarium.

The recordings are designed for you to write alongside them, with recorded silence in which to write. You can, of course, switch off the audio at any time, and set your own alarm, repeat a provocation that works better than another, or make notes towards a thing rather than write the thing itself.

Each provocation is timed to give you space to faddle before and after it. If you need an early lunch then obviously slot it in to suit you. The sequence intends to grow and widen your thinking/dreaming.

1200-1230 Provocation One
A New Music: hearing the music or rhythm in your project.

This provocation works out of the thought that each new piece of writing has a particular voice, or music, that will lead you though the making of it. You’ll need: a piece of writing from earlier, an influencer book, and sheets of blank A4. When you’re ready, press play.

1330-1400 Provocation Two
Its Creatureliness: How does it feel?

This exercise approaches your idea / project / writing from a different angle: as another being, an embodied feeling thing. It asks you to identify moments that illuminate the larger feeling of the body of the project, and consider its shape or form through any changes that occur. You’ll need: whatever you use to write

1430-1500 Provocation Three
The terrain: What is contained within your piece?

Press play and gather around you what you’ll need: all the bits and pieces of your project: the previous writings, photos, influencer books, the music – all the things that have brought you to this point, this piece / project – and spread them on the floor or table top.

1500-1530 Provocation Four
A Tethering: The final writing session for now, discovering where your imagining, exploring and poking have brought you. Fifteen minutes to flesh out an aspect of the project. Write slowly, write carefully, write for the full fifteen minutes if you can.

Intro
Skear Zines responds to the writers we work with. It aims to resist homogenisation, and celebrate querenesse. It wants to give space to those voices that might not fit into traditional publishing models, voices that have been sidelined or as yet unheard, voices that have small (yet big) things to say, voices that will sing in unconventional forms.

What we’re interested in
Writing that straddles prose and poetry, fiction and memoir, narrative and non-consecutive sequences, short or longer pieces (anything from 100 – 2400 words), fragments or some other interesting form. We are open to combining image with text, embedding web-based audio into the zines and other things we’ve not yet thought of.

Zine format
Each zine is folded from a single A3 sheet. No glue, no stitches. Only cuts are used to create a variety of folding and unfolding forms that ask the reader to reappraise how they come to the work, or how the work comes to them.

We’re starting small, working with invited writers. We are closed to submissions. However if you know of someone whose work you think might suit this folded/ unfolded form please get in touch.

Behind the Skear is the belief all books are a collaboration between the imaginations of writer, reader and bookmaker. As such each Skear Zine will be different, depending on the dynamic of that collaboration.

We have beem making zines for four years now
more info on the Skear Zines website

Who we are
Maya Chowdhry is a digital art/activist who works at the intersection of form, traversing radio, Installation, theatre and video. She creates immersive and democratic experiences for audiences and explores themes such as climate justice, seed sovereignty and food justice. She has worked as an editor and mentor for young writers and digital artists. Find out more here.

Sarah Hymas has been making artistbooks for several years, in conventional and less conventional forms, always with the desire to renegotiate the dynamic between book and writing, reader and book. It’s time to unfold further. She worked with many writers around the north west of UK as editor for Lancaster Literature Festival for six years.

Mish Green works across written and spoken forms in poetry, short fiction, and non-fiction. Their work often explores the overlaps of class, disability and immigration – the sites of invisible and hyper-visible bodies – and they recently edited TransBareAll, an anthology of writing and art by transgender and non-binary artists. More on their website

A skear is a low rocky outcrop in the sea. The word is a derivation of skerry which is a derivation of the Norwegian skjaer. Skear is used around Morecambe Bay, in northern England.

It is a word that changes shape. That comes from elsewhere, that refers to something that also changes shape: the outcrops are shunted and shifted by currents. The pamphlets / zines are a shape-shifting of the A3 sheet folded into various shapes and sizes that open in different ways; forms that extend the textual content into a physical dimension.

To classify the press as Zines suggests all we’ll ever make are zines, which might not be true. Skear Zines might redefine what a ‘zine’ is or could be. Ultimately it’s about the z-ness, its abbreviation, its not-quite-ness.