Developing academic wellbeing through writing retreats

Writing experiences have a crucial role in the wellbeing of academics and PhD researchers and this paper seeks to extend a body of work on writing retreats, by exploring them from a wellbeing perspective. Drawing from literature on wellbeing and the practical experience of developing and delivering writing retreats, it highlights wellbeing outcomes that arise as people write together and engage in social and physical activities away from the university. A sense of wellbeing is developed through the combination of social, physical and sharing activities, which create feelings of confidence, safety and belonging, and a sense of being calm, focused and clear-headed. These states contribute to the writing task, but more importantly can support a general sense of being well. The conclusions draw attention to the importance of non-writing aspects of writing retreats and their role in enhancing peoples' broader sense of wellbeing. The challenge going forward is how to translate these subjective, personal and relational wellbeing benefits back in to university life. It is difficult to envision how writing retreats might have comprehensive wellbeing impacts unless they are integrated into wider strategic initiatives which start to tackle some of the wider causes of ill-being in HE.