Katherine

Midway through the MA in Creative Practice, @Katherine van Haeften is developing Listening Spaces, a simple but powerful community project built around something many people rarely experience: being truly heard.

At a time when conversations are often rushed and advice comes quickly, Listening Spaces offers something different. Hosted in local community venues & online, the sessions create a calm and welcoming environment where people can speak without interruption, judgement, or pressure to have their problems solved. Participants are equally welcome to simply sit and listen.

A Different Kind of Community Space

The idea grew out of Katherine's understanding, from over 40 years experience facilitating group workshops in Personal Development, that being heard is not a luxury but a fundamental human need.

Rather than functioning as therapy, coaching, or a discussion group, Listening Spaces creates structured opportunities for people to slow down and share what is on their minds. The emphasis is on presence, attention, and respect.

The project offers an exploration of what happens when people are given room to think aloud without being corrected, redirected, or fixed.

The result is often surprisingly powerful. Thoughts that feel tangled can begin to settle. Feelings of isolation can soften. Participants frequently discover that what they needed most was not advice, but space to be.

Creating Something Rare

Developing the project has involved rethinking many of the assumptions we make about conversation.

In everyday life, there can be pressure to respond quickly, offer solutions, or move discussions forward. Listening Spaces asks people to do something much simpler, and often much harder: stay present with another person's experience without taking it over.

That same practice benefits listeners too. Many participants report feeling calmer, more grounded, and more connected through the experience of listening deeply to others.

For Katherine, building the project has reinforced the idea that meaningful community is often created through small, intentional acts rather than grand gestures.

What's Next?

Listening Spaces have been hosted in the community at the Social Bar in Saxmundham over the past 5 months as well as online. Katherine is now preparing a submission for an academic trial to obtain the data for her to progress to the next step of inviting both the NHS and The Department of Education to consider integrating Listening Spaces into their services & culture.

Find Out More

Katherine's next step is to provide a Listening Space at the Wild and Wiser Weekend in Dorset, a women only event organised by @Kelly Keating a fellow MA student, this September.