I believe that creative practice can create conditions for genuine encounter — between people, between stories, and between parts of ourselves we don’t always have language for. My workshops and facilitation work draws on the same themes that run through my performance practice: identity, belonging, memory, and the body as a place of knowing.
Stories My Mother Told Me A series of eight open group sessions exploring identity and belonging within the diverse Iraqi diaspora community. Applied creative exercises — including free writing, painting, drama and movement — created shared experiences from which dialogue could emerge. The aim was to help participants anchor themselves in the present and begin to listen to one another: to speak from an embodied place rather than a purely cerebral one. Each week brought a different mix of participants — first-generation immigrants alongside those who have been in the UK for generations, people who sought refuge here for a wide range of reasons: political, religious, ethnic, or related to gender and sexual orientation. That diversity, week on week, was one of the most heartening aspects of the work.
Sheelan’s community work extends beyond the studio, from facilitating creative sessions inside refugee camps in ‘the Middle East’ to working with asylum seekers and refugees in outreach departments of theatres and cultural centres. For further examples, please get in touch through the Connect With Me contact form.
Sheelan مشوار 