Upon Saturday the 26th of October, at the Shell Grotto in Cliftonville, and then Sundowner’s backstage workshop room, Emma Robdale led participants upon a creative writing expedition that combined history, imagination and nautical themes! Read more about our fully booked-out workshop!
Meeting outside the shell grotto participants grouped, waiting for their instructions… some had been before, some had never dared! I had given them things to look out for and concentrate upon while in the grotto and one of the grotto guides gave a small talk before the group of 10 entered…
The space is full of three-dimensional shapes, with every shell reflecting light into a multi-patterned landscape. Not only wonderous to look at, the shell grotto’s origin is not known, and it is full of mystery and potential mythology. What was lovely about a group of ND+ individuals discovering the place together is the conversation, and sometimes debate that aided participants in connecting to the eeirie space. As they discovered the mosaics in the walls, the wondered if they had been interpreted correctly; it was noticed that, even though their were many ovarian structures, none were on the guide map, but a ‘phallus’ that did not present as very phallic was… could it have been a more male interpretation that lead to this view?
We spent almost a whole hour fascinated by the structure. I put in a little extra time for the extraordinarily quirky gift shop, Full of fossils and local artists’ work, before herding the group off to sundowners for the workshop and group discussions! Here we found that almost everyone in attendance was Neurodivergent! (which was absolutely wonderful!) and participants were given a number of short creative writing exercises that aimed at shaping and directing their own experiences of the grotto – they included ones to do with shape and design, as well as imagining the original origin, personifying one of the characters in the mosaics, and imagining you were taking part in some kind of ritual within the dark passageways…
There were many opportunities to share work where the group could listen to creative perspectives of their grotto cave adventure! – They ranged from Sci-Fi cults to architectural expeditions, and beautiful poetic-like prose to describe the shells.
As a Creative Writer, I’m always looking for places that will captivate the imagination… it was fantastic to have the opportunity to work with such a fantastic group of people and be inspired by a mysterious and multi-textured environment! Thank-you so much to the shell grotto for having us!