Re-opening after lockdown: welcoming residents back

After four months of lockdown and many virtual writing retreats, July saw our first residential writing retreat re-open..

Opening up after lockdown is a journey that starts long before the doors open: this applies to any business, from pubs, to restaurants to hairdressers. Carrying out a risk assessment can be fraught: there are so many new questions to answer, so many new situations to pre-empt. No matter what service a business is delivering, the customers’ safety has to come first. The challenge of those who work in the hospitality sector is to ensure that customers are still having a relaxing and even spoiling time while all the necessary additional post-Covid19 safeguards are in place.

When considering when and how to re-start our residential writing retreats all the above considerations prayed on my mind. In addition, I was acutely aware of our resident academics’ peculiar needs: not only did they need to feel safe and looked after, as the term ‘retreat’ promises, but they would need to garnish enough focus and concentration to write! Indeed, in some cases this meant resuming work which had long been interrupted due to lockdown: whether it was lack of structure or supervisory routine or the challenges of being weighed down by relentless child-care responsibilities, it was clear to me that opening up residential writing retreats at Chapelgarth meant to offer a genuinely required provision.

From carrying out a risk assessment to registering with Visit England to qualify for a post-Covid19 accommodation quality kitemark, all the paperwork was carried out. Guidelines in the meantime were changing by the day.. but we decided to stick to the most cautious of guidelines: the recommended 2 metre distancing for individual writing desks and eating stations (indoor) and a more relaxed minimum of one metre distance outdoor. This would include breaks in the garden, in the conservatory, in a pagoda (for larger numbers) or in our woods. Numbers for now would be limited to a maximum of 7 participants – with each retreater having their own allocated washroom.

New PaWe have had to sacrifice the ‘writing pool’ concept to some extent: sadly sharing one big table is not practical these days: instead we have now two writing rooms – each with three desks located two metres apart – so each writing room is a writing ‘bubble’ – to use one of the new post-lockdown terms.. We are lucky that we have plenty of space so that goal sharing and informal conversations can be shared in other rooms – such as our large dining room space, known as the Artist’s Studio.

After all the preparations above, last week our post-lockdown set-up was finally put to the test! Our participants had been sent detailed instructions about sanitizing stations, social-distancing measures etc. They were real stars – each one of them seamlessly adapting to the new post-lockdown measures.. be the end of the retreat the ‘new normal’ even felt.. well, normal!!

The best bit for me was the feedback after the retreat – I was over the moon with amount of writing that has been produced: two fiction writers’ creativity had evidently been unlocked, and one returning PhD student rated this writing retreat the highest ever in productivity!

I am really delighted to be able to reassure everyone: even in these strange, ‘unprecedented’ times residential writing retreats are still sprinkling some magic dust on everyone!

If you are interested in attending a residential writing retreat please check our website.