In April 2026, Norfolk Wildlife Trust partnered with the National Centre for Writing to host international author, Sam Sweeney, as part of the Melbourne City of Virtual Writer in Residence Programme.

Sam is a writer whose work explores home, place, identity, music, and queerness. You can read a piece of her own work here, which she wrote for Norfolk Wildlife Trust.

Sam led a special creative writing workshop for the Trust, which was designed especially for participants who felt they didn't have a strong connection to nature. This workshop encouraged the budding writers to deepen and explore their relationship with nature, through the themes of memory, belonging, and home.

The participants took on a self-guided exercise in a natural space close to them, before they came together as a group to write a collaborative piece.

The self-guided exercise

The group were shown the above landscape photo, taken by Sam, and asked to write just two sentences inspired by what they saw in the image. They then pasted their sentences into a shared document, to create a brand-new piece of collaborative writing.

Here is an extract of what the group came up with:

"Truncated spurred contours weave and twist. Landscape carved by green foaming waters of a snaking river, passing through regardless of its consequences.

"The coral rocks over the river had burrow-holes like little homes for open-air fish. It extended to the far beyond, a great dry ocean.

"Trees hold on either side of the river, roots where the rock breaks into soil. A river that could be a path, if trees could swim as fish.

"Falling into soft light and blurry edges. Bare feet carrying me through the landscape of my ancestors, washing away my grief."

The collaborative piece

Working in small groups, the participants created some more original writing. Here are some highlights:

"There are more grains of sand on this Earth

Then stars in our Milky Way

Or so they say

So while we can dream and gaze above

Let’s ground ourselves"

(Kit, Ash, Richard, Imogen)

"'But we're lonely,' the bluebells say, just like their ancestors did last year. Lonely in a chorus. They cannot recognise their neighbours as separate when they themselves are strings of bells. 'The daffodils and snowdrops left and now we're alone.'

'You have each other,' we say, tightening our grip on our tree. 'A whole ocean of you.'"

(Emma, Penelope, Alison)

"Dear one, you belong to all that is here, a possession 

not our own, only a part of this tradition 

and ritual of the tale."

(Mason, Aliya, Shreya)

Want to get involved?

Why not have a go at some self-guided nature writing yourself? Sam's guidance was simple: find a natural space (anywhere from a balcony or garden to a forest or beach), bring along something to write with and some supplies, and follow some prompts to get you started.

Where are you? (15 minutes):

This prompt is designed to ground you in your environment and help you to dissolve the separation between us and nature.

Set a timer for 15 minutes (though you can take longer if you want). For the first 10 minutes, use your senses to free write about what you can see, hear, feel, smell and taste. Seeing is the sense we'll instinctively use the most – so really try and give attention to your other four senses.

For the last five minutes, choose one thing in your environment to focus on. It could be a tree, a bird, a creek, a clump of soil, a beetle. Anything. Really home in on it and write down everything you can about it. When you think you've found it all, zoom in (with your focus, or literally!) closer and closer and closer. Write down whatever comes up.

Switching places (30 minutes):

This is about becoming one of the things you have observed in your environment. Return to the thing you closely focused on in the first prompt - you're now going to switch places with it and write from its perspective.

Set a timer for 10 minutes. Imagine you are the Nature Being. Assume it has human senses: what might it see, hear, feel, smell, taste? What other senses might this Being have? How does it experience these senses, experience its world?

Set another timer for 10 minutes, still imagining yourself as the Nature Being. Write a mini autobiography from its perspective - what's its life story, and what does a day in the life of this Nature Being look like?

Set a final timer for 10 minutes, still imagining yourself as the Nature Being. Write out a scene where this Being interacts with another part of its environment. What does it think about? How does it communicate? Play around with it! Throw out the human rulebook! Everything is made up!

Reflection (15 minutes):

Complete a brief reflection to consider how this creative exercise has changed – or not changed! – your perception of nature and place.

How did it feel to sit in your environment? How do you define 'nature'? Do you consider yourself, and humanity more generally, part of nature, or outside of it in some way? How has walking in your Nature Being's 'shoes' changed how you perceive your place in nature? Has writing from the perspective of something in the natural environment changed how you perceive the natural world?

Share your work

We hope that these prompts provide some inspiration for your own nature writing. If you'd like to share the results of your creativity with us, please send it over to editor@norfolkwildlifetrust.org.uk. There's a chance that we might publish it on our blog or in our member magazine, Tern!

Norfolk Wildlife Trust runs seasonal creative writing workshops at Cley Marshes. To find out more and sign up, head to our events page.