Facing Images: A Ffasiwn Creative Writing Workshop with Alix Beeston

Alix Beeston is leading a creative writing workshop at the National Museum Cardiff on Wednesday 25 November, from 2pm to 4pm. It's called Facing Images, and it runs alongside It's Called Ffasiwn, the photography exhibition that's currently on in Gallery 18.

If you haven't seen the exhibition yet, it's a socially engaged, anti-fashion project that artists Clémentine Schneidermann and Charlotte James have been developing for over a decade, working with young people across the south Wales Valleys. It sits somewhere between style-led image-making and documentary practice, and it challenges the usual assumptions about who fashion is for and who gets to shape how communities are seen. Rather than observing from a distance, the work grew out of sustained relationships and shared making, with the young people acting as creative partners. The portraits on display are the result of that process.

The workshop invites you to experiment with imaginative, playful and self-reflective ways of writing about those portraits, and to think about the power of seeing and the art of being seen. You'll be working with the images in the room, using them as a starting point for your own writing.

Alix Beeston is a writer and academic based here in Cardiff. She's a Reader in Literature and Visual Culture at Cardiff University and a leading scholar of feminist approaches to literature, film and photography. Her forthcoming book, Image Encounters, is due out from Penn State University Press in 2027, so this session sits right in her wheelhouse. The workshop is in Gallery 18, the same space as the exhibition, and runs from 2pm to 4pm on 25 November. Tickets are £10 standard, £7 for open concessions and members, and £5 for students.