Longing - a Language

Longing - a Language is a three-part writing workshop devised and led by Research Associate 2024 Sophie Mak-Schram. This series asks is writing an intimate appendage for you, or are you looking for languages to describe, circumscribe, connect, commune? Who do you long to be in community with, and what languaging can we build for that longing? The workshops will take place online via Zoom, on Tuesdays 13, 20 & 27 May 2025, 6–8pm.

This workshop sequence takes concerns and speculative formats of belonging, as a starting point to write and dream up other ways of languaging identities and communities. Aimee Carillo Rowe's "Be Longing" (2005), alongside ideas from Trinh Minh Ha, Paul B. Preciado, Kris Dittel + Clementine Edwards and more, will be our shared lexicon from which to build our own languaging around uncategorising, relating, kinships. This languaging - which we will develop through short writing activities around self, desire and art writing about chosen objects - might then become a companion to your practice or activism, or a support structure for your own navigation of where you are.

In the first session, we will focus on localities, location, belonging and relation. In the second, you will respond to each other's practices through a supported activity focused on longing. In the third, we will convene around languaging. Across all three sessions, we will engage in a mixture of discussions rooted in texts, activities to write short-form, 'low stakes' first drafts, and collaboratively exchange on strategies and dreams for alternative languages and longings to survive on our own terms in these times.

Themes and interests you might bring to the sequence include:

- An investment or curiosity about belonging (in place, in a group, in an identity)

- An interest in desire, longing, queer kinships, and writing around or about this

- A concern or discomfort with an identity category or format - perhaps one you're already exploring materially or personally

- A specific language (yours or a shared one) - material or not - that you're keen to develop further

You don't need experience with writing, or familiarity with all of the above interests!

This is a ticketed series, at a cost of £30 for three, two-hour weekly, online sessions. The workshops will take place on Zoom. The Zoom link and information will be emailed in advance. Places are limited and booking is essential here for this Public Programme event. This workshop is suitable for ages 18 and over.

There is a fee waiver for one place. If you feel that you would benefit from this opportunity please email info@ccadld.org to register your interest.

Images: Sophie Mak-Schram, Tools of the Talking Trade (2018), still from video work for FACT Liverpool & Sophie Mak-Schram, Language is only in time (2019)