research
creative writing for wellbeing
engage fellowship 2024
tanvir bush
As an Engage Fellow, I explore creative public engagement methods at the intersection of disability, academia, and governance, fostering ‘transformational inclusion’ through initiatives like a disabled-led public engagement network and the 2025 Transformational Inclusion Symposium in Bath. My engagement experience spans Higher Education as a Research Fellow and disability activist at Bath Spa University and the wider community as a co-opted town councillor for Corsham, UK.
Using compassionate empathy and the power of our lived experiences as disabled people, we aim to ignite discussion, widen understanding and inspire transformational inclusion i.e. no longer ‘us and them’ but just ‘us’. No longer ‘What can we do to help you?’ but instead ‘What can we all do to help each other?’ With imagination and creativity, we can all respond to the whole community's needs.
Engage fellowships are for individuals, partnerships, or groups who want to test an idea or explore a challenge relating to public and community engagement within UK higher education. Funded as part of the NCCPE's grant funding from UKRI, RE, Wellcome, SFC, DELNI, and HEFCW, they support people who bring fresh thinking, a commitment to challenge, and an ability to work proactively with others.
Individual Fellows must be members of the PEP Network. They use their funding to address a challenge or opportunity to improve the public engagement sector by either resourcing others to work alongside them or undertaking the work alone. They receive one-to-one mentor support and are responsible for all aspects of the fellowship.
what is an engage fellowship?
creative writing laboratory
Arrange one-to-one online sessions that explore creative and reflexive writing techniques to spark your imagination and enhance your writing skills. Alternatively, a group can book my extended more formal workshops on specific themes including story, plot, poetry, writing dialogue, the impact of metaphor, utilising the senses, writing for social change and much, much, more…
In my Creative Writing Laboratory, I show you techniques designed to:
- unlock your creative potential
- deepen your understanding of yourself
- widen your perspectives
- engage empathy
- find greater positivity, confidence and resilience.
I aim to leave you inspired, energised and entertained!
It has been a very enjoyable course – didn’t particularly enjoy the “life story” session but that is probably just me. I hope that there will be another course. — J1 Not long enough! Would definitely be up for more – especially playwriting / scripts etc. — JB Tanvir – you’re very good. A very good and interesting six weeks. — J2 Excellent. Great people. Very interesting, joyous atmosphere, very welcoming and inclusive. Makes one think. — R
Two writing courses down with Tanvir and still I want more. There is, for me anyway, so much to like. What I want as a writer still learning the craft is: a safe space to try new ideas, a supportive space to share emerging work, an inspiring space to make me want to do more, and a funny space to remember that it ain’t worth doing unless you can get a kick out of it. Tanvir provides all this, and much more. Highly recommended, as long as you do not take my place on the next course. — Malcolm Sinclair, June 2017
“Very interesting, joyous atmosphere”Workshop participant
I have attended two Creative Writing Courses led by Tanvir. She shows warmth, wit and wisdom. I always leave feeling inspired. If you are a budding writer and just need some direction then come on Tanvir's course and you are sure to find it! — Julia Cawthorne, June 2017Tanvir's wise counsel and swift guidance have transformed my stuck present, paralysed by writers block, into a joyous relishing of a future where writing can be for pure pleasure. Like being shown where to dive in a vast ocean and discover the lost treasure within my words. — Rachael Burgess, June 2017
post-doctoral research
writing, empathy and empowerment
I have been lucky enough to have a career that has led me from film-making and photography to writing and research. I am also a disabled activist with a keen interest in transformational inclusion, community action and access for all.
As a doctoral student of creative writing, I was encouraged not only to develop my writing and explore research methods but also to observe, analyse and reflect on my own creative development process.
I expected this meta-analysis to prove useful to my writing, and it has. I was more surprised that it enabled me to observe the positive emotional impact of the creative process on my own psyche and on my readers, creating catharsis and empathy.
My doctorate thus opened up questions likely to be the focus of, or at least to underlie, much of my post-doctoral teaching and research in the next few years:
- Can creative writing programmes be designed specifically to emphasise empathy and embodiment, to alleviate feelings of isolation, anxiety and/or melancholy?
- Could these programmes empower participants to engage with more confidence socially and even politically?
- Can we use or design adequate scientific measurements of the impact of these original creative writing interventions?
creative writing labs
To develop understanding of the impact of creative writing on well-being and resilience, and of the role of empathy in mitigating prejudice, I designed and facilitate the Corsham Creative Writing Laboratory.
One-to-one sessions are available and can be booked via this website.
Group workshops can be arranged and designed with your needs in mind, incorporating specific themes including story, plot, poetry, writing dialogue, the impact of metaphor, utilising the senses, writing for social change and more…
See the laboratory section above.
activism and academia
As an Engage Fellow 24- 25, I am exploring creative public engagement at the intersection of disability, academia and local governance to inspire ‘transformational inclusion’.
I will create an international disabled-led public engagement network and facilitate a Transformational Inclusion Symposium in Bath in 2025.
I also lead the Creative Writing, Disability and Climate Precarity work-stream on the UKRI-funded Sensing Nature Project.
In 2018, Dr Stuart Read and I founded the Disabled Staff Network and the cross-departmental Disability Action Group at Bath Spa University. Both groups support and encourage disability and diversity in the university.
This work is informed by my past position as an Associate Research Fellow on the D4D project (Disability and Community: Dis/engagement, Dis/enfranchisement, Dis/parity and Dissent).
Focusing on disability and exclusion, this involved seven UK universities and one in the USA, as well as community arts groups, theatres and other partners, for the AHRC Connected Communities programme.
empathy and writing research group
A co-founder and previous co-chair with Prof. Maggie Gee of the Empathy and Writing Research Group at Bath Spa University, I have helped facilitate the growth of this interdisciplinary international group as it explores the value of empathy in today’s world.
For instance, difference and separateness are often rallying cries to conflict. Can compassionate empathy help us understand one another's points of view, beliefs, cultural values and feelings?
David Comer Kidd and Emanuele Castano’s ‘Reading Literary Fiction Increases Theory of Mind’ — a founding paper in creative empathy studies — argues that literary fiction improves the ability to see life from a different perspective. Our group responds to this emerging field in the creative and literary arts.
collaborate with me
If you have similar interests, are engaged in related projects, and want to discuss collaboration around these themes, I would be delighted to hear from you!
seminars and workshops
Example: PhD seminar coming to our senses
By designating, for instance, a novel and its contextualising thesis as ‘practice as research’, how may we apply the title of writer-practitioner to ourselves whilst also utilising a fluid model of observer/participant, participant/observer, autoethnographer and qualitative researcher?
This workshop is intended to un-pick the proposition above and to use a series of short and entertaining creative writing exercises, based around our senses and sense memory, to explore the different positions we may face engaging in various, and often seemingly discordant, research methodologies.