A SERIES of opportunities for Clacks women to come together and reflect on the pandemic through storytelling is being launched tomorrow.

Fledging community interest company Hillfoots Tales is launching the storytelling programme for women with a series of workshops in a bid to improve wellbeing and to offer an opportunity to socialise.

Funded by Inspiring Scotland's Creative Communities programme with no charge for participants, workshops will go ahead every Thursday, starting tomorrow, on March 24.

Joanne Dowd, of Hillfoots Tales, explained the workshops will be an opportunity for women to come together, socialise and reflect on the shared experience of Covid-19.

She told the Advertiser: “It's all about preventing loneliness, people can be lonely because they are isolated in a family or they could be lonely because they are not seeing anyone.

“It's about having mechanism to deal with that, to do things that can improve your wellbeing, meet other people, talk about your feelings – and storytelling is a great way of doing that.

“They can tell their own story, they can look at stories of strong women that they know or strong women from Scottish history – there are lots of examples we can use.”

There will be six distinct sessions in the coming weeks with the workshops going ahead at Inglewood House from 6.30pm to 9pm with an early supper included.

The hotel and spa as well as its woodland surroundings will provide a backdrop and organisers hope those heading along will be able to build up some resilience.

To encourage others, Joanne has opened up to the Advertiser about her own experience of the pandemic.

She said: “I'm quite honest about it, I think I struggled – I think most of us struggled during the pandemic, especially with the proper lockdown when people weren't able to go out and weren't able to see their families.

“I'm a mother and a grandmother and, actually, I do live alone so that was a big thing for me.

“But fortunately for me I work as well so I was able to go to work, help people in other communities who were struggling and that really helped me a lot.”

Working in a community centre, she spoke to many other women who faced challenges, some of whom had limited or no access to the online world.

Joanne added: “It was a struggle for us all – there was a lot on television about people learning to bake or doing all their exercises [during lockdown], that was good for some people but there's a whole other side to that, some people don't have that opportunity.”

Sessions must be booked, email hillfootstales@gmail.com.