Fruitful Productions: Creative Workshops

The Fruitful Productions team (Alice and Hima) facilitated creative workshops at Exeter Phoenix in April and May 2026. We aim to host creative safe spaces for LGBTQ+ people and allies. Our workshops have engaging creative activities that allow for relaxed conversations around identity and expression, where labels and terminology take a step back and shared experiences and curiosity are brought to the forefront. 

This was our first series of workshops in the community. We've both been residents of Exeter for more than five years, and our project came from our own experiences of finding support, knowledge, and community in our creative projects. We wanted to expand and share that experience through our creative workshops, especially in the local community. Our workshop participants and supporters expressed that there is a real need for local inclusive spaces that platform and support creativity and artists, as well as conversations around LGBTQ+ topics that are open to everyone.

We aimed to use as many free resources readily available to us: we did a short course on entrepreneurship with Student Startups, used Exeter Library’s Business & IP Centre, got in touch with organisations that matched our values like Exeter Pride and Out There Together, and contacted our local Community Builders. Everyone was really supportive of our idea, and after a few weeks, we had managed to organise our workshops and grow our community. We’re really grateful for these opportunities, and we want to continue working on our mission and goals as we both move to different places for work opportunities. 

Zoe, Community Builder for St Davids, said: “It was exciting to hear from Alice and Hima and find out about their ideas to create inclusive, creative spaces in the city centre. After running successful workshops at University of Exeter, which also brought in non-student residents, Alice and Hima were keen to extend these sessions into the wider community. We spoke about how they could get funding to get their workshops off the ground, and that they could link up with an established local group/organisation with similar aims to host the funds. In just a few weeks, they arranged two engaging workshops at Exeter Phoenix, with support from the Wellbeing Exeter Enhanced Project.”