Leyla Josephine

Leyla Josephine is a performance poet and theatre maker originally from Glasgow now residing in South Ayrshire. Leyla has extensive experience working creatively with people in different social contexts. She has worked in schools, prisons, youth theatres, early years, mother groups, universities, with young carers, young people in care, both children and adults refugees and asylum seekers.

Leyla works mostly with autobiographically material encouraging participants to write their own opinions and stories. She’s drawn to new narratives from people usually unheard in culture. She enjoys working with people with little or no experience of writing as she believes that anyone can be a writer and her job is simply to offer tools and a safe space in order for them to do so. It is a priority that her workshops are extremely flexible to match all abilities and personalities.

In her own practice she performs her own spoken word pieces regularly and creates solo theatre shows that she tours across the country. She has been featured in Huffington Post, Gutter, The Scotsman, The National, Buzzfeed, The Guardian and on the BBC.

Leyla has been recently extending her writing into screenwriting and was one of the writer’s picked for Scottish Film Talent Network’s Write4Film and Scottish Shorts.

(Photo credit: Jassy Earl)