Your Stories
Your Stories is a series of free workshops running from August – October 2025, designed and led by a group of young people in Southampton, delivered in partnership with In Focus. Your Stories responds to the work of Jane Austen, taking inspiration from the author to celebrate her 250th birthday year. The workshops are open to all, and use poetry, painting, cartoons, collage, fashion, and textiles so that participants can tell their stories in a range of powerful, creative ways.
A selection of the art created in the workshops is shared digitally on this page after each workshop, and will also be displayed in a collective exhibition in late autumn, leading up to a celebration event on Jane Austen’s 250th birthday on 16 December.
This project is supported by Southampton Forward, National Lottery Heritage Fund and Foyle Foundation as part of Jane Austen 250.
Want to get involved?
If you are a literature lover, a budding creative or just someone with something to say about today’s world – this is your space to be heard.
Free drinks and snacks at every workshop, and everyone is welcome. Interested in more than one workshop? Go ahead and sign up for a few in advance via the page linked below.
Please note that activities are suitable for people aged 11+. The workshops have been designed for adults, young people and older children. Anyone under 18 will need to be accompanied by an adult at all times – and that adult is very welcome to join in!
The work
Explore the work created in the 8 workshops, as they happen.
1. Blackout Poetry
Ten people aged from their early 20s to their 70s all gathered in October Books in Southampton to learn about and make blackout poetry from Jane Austen texts. People selected words and blacked out others to create new poems, sometimes adding decorations or enhancing the visual form of the work in different ways.
Participants shared their stories and the decisions behind their creative choices as they worked. A small selection of the poems are displayed here, as well as some snippets of conversation.
I started looking at Jane Austen’s text, and immediately, these words around judgement, fear and anger against others jumped out. I think it was because yesterday I heard someone speaking on the radio with such judgement and intolerance about asylum seekers, and indeed all kinds of people that were different to her. She seemed to see monsters everywhere, and it made me really sad.
I fell in love for the first time! (And learnt I’m not asexual/aromantic as a result, which is a little destabilising?). I adore my girlfriends so much though!
More coming soon…