Within and beyond the journal: publishing your systemic ideas

This interactive workshop is focussed on having systemic voices heard by supporting workshop participants to share their systemic ideas, research, and practice with wider audiences in ways that feel both accessible and achievable. The workshop aims to open a broad landscape of possibilities, encouraging participants to think creatively and systemically about how ideas can travel.

Throughout the workshop, we will share examples of diverse approaches to communicating systemic ideas. For instance, poetry written by a social worker reflecting on work with migrants, academic literature reviews, and practitioner focused writing aimed at wider public engagement. The workshop will acknowledge common barriers, including self-doubt and impostor feelings, while also taking a realistic and constructive approach to feedback, critique, and public engagement. Engaging activities will include:

• Identifying your message and audience - clarifying purpose, voice, and intention

• Exploring dissemination formats - comparing academic, professional, and creative routes

• Finding effective titles - playful exercises to spark clarity and curiosity

• Strengthening abstracts - hands on critique and collaborative refinement

• Analysing writing across genres - what works, what doesn’t, and why

• Beginning a draft or structure - guided prompts to move ideas into action

Grounded in systemic and relational principles - including reflexivity, context sensitivity, and an appreciation of multiple perspectives - the workshop highlights how systemic ideas can be communicated in many forms.  Examples will be drawn from a range of dissemination approaches, including academic writing, practitioner-focused articles, and creative forms such as poetry.

Participants will leave with enthusiasm for communicating systemic ideas, greater confidence in sharing their ideas, skills and tools for structuring and communicating their work. They will also gain insight into how rhetoric can support the development of a compelling argument and help their ideas travel further.