Crafting Change; Creative Responses to Climate Crisis and Concerns of Our Time Through Writing // with Laurie McMillan

Have you noticed how the world both challenges us and graces us? 

Join us for a creative workshop to explore:

• your concerns and experiences with our climate reality.
• nature’s intimate connection with us.

Through free-writing, sharing, and discussion, we’ll explore the power of our voices and how we can find or deepen our role in the work for a livable future.  

Climate concerns touch on a variety of other issues, both political and personal that are also subjects for writing in this workshop. Writing prompts, selected readings, and home journaling suggestions will be offered in a supportive group workshop. We will identify and share tools for resilience and how we practice hope and connection with nature in our everyday lives. No writing or art experience necessary!

Week By Week 

Week 1: We will introduce ourselves through several writing opportunities which focus on what most concerns us at this time and where our gifts lie. The theme of what life means to us in our day to day life will be explored and what possibilities lie in our imagination to cultivate more connection with what is meaningful by activating our gifts will be processed through writing and discussion.

Week 2: We will look at our fears and hopes through poems that speak to both. These poems will offer springboards to writing to connect us to the deeper threads of our lives that hold fear and hope in a grounded way. We also will begin to explore what we want most to bring aliveness. Many writers can guide us toward that aliveness who we will touch upon. We will explore sensory experiences and experiences that have enlivened us. What are their characteristics and commonalities?

Week 3: We will explore through the lens of curiosity what is yet unnamed and mysterious about our lives through reading writers like Marie Howe, David Whyte, Rilke, Rumi and Levertov. We will write from the invitation to explore our night and daytime dreams and reflect on what being a visionary might mean.

Week 4: We will look at people in history who have taken risks and enacted change. We will explore narrative and poems that celebrate these risk takers and prophetic voices and wonder about our own voices and what we truly need to say to move beyond limitation, apathy, frustration and anxiety..

Week 5: We will explore poets and writers who make use of gratitude and connection with the world in ways that utilize faith, nature involvement, spiritual and artistic methods of celebration about life in all its grandeur and difficulty. We will write from various visual artists who capture a sense of spiritual oneness and appreciation. To wrap things up we will discuss writing practice as devotion to ourselves and what we want for the world, whether it is regular journaling, a blog, a manuscript or whatever goal/s that manifest throughout this course.

Who Should Take This Class

Anyone interested in how the world both challenges us and graces us. Self-expression, creativity, the written word, and a supportive group environment will facilitate a sense of aliveness and increased participation in the world.

We offer scholarships based on income as well as some partial scholarships for people living with serious illness and/or disability or people of color through the Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg Fund. Please fill out this scholarship application form so that we can find the best way to make the class accessible to you.

Please note: Registration closes September 10, 2025—five (5) days before the class start date.

What people are saying about classes with Laurie:

• Laurie opens up worlds for us and helps us realize our creative goals.
• Laurie helps others become more of who they are through creativity and being part of a supportive group.
• People wouldn’t so enthusiastically sign on if your leadership didn’t offer such wonderful, new, refreshing, invigorating dimensions. As well as deep connection. You inspire great writing. You provide the structures and examples and encouragement for that. You also lift us up, both as writers and as human beings hoping to make sense of the world.

Format

Course materials will be delivered through weekly 90-minute Zoom meetings, held Monday September 15 & 29 and October 6, 13, & 20, 2025 from 7-8:30 PM ET (6-7:30 PM CT | 5-6:30 PM MT | 4-5:30 PM PT | 12-1:30 AM UTC). Sessions will be recorded and made available to students only. (Please note there is no class Sept. 22.) 

You should plan to spend about (2+) hours per week between Zoom meetings and creating.

About the Facilitator

Laurie McMillan is passionate about helping people feel the unlimited potential that creativity can offer them. She believes creativity and community weave a potent force in the world. She has taught writing in many venues including Osher Lifelong learning, libraries, community centers, and hospitals. She holds an MFA in writing, is a Poetry Therapist and is currently a counselor and former nurse where she attends to the whole person using creativity as a tool to enhance self-understanding and connection with the world.