Dorian Haarhoff Creative Wordshops

Dorian Haarhoff
He is a former teacher trainer and Professor of English at the University of Namibia, and has also taught in a Canadian Creative Writing Faculty and in the Film Studies unit at the University of Colorado in Boulder. He has also served as an external examiner at UCT for the MA programme in Creative Writing.

Since 1998 he has run his own business, Creative Workshops. Dorian Haarhoff has on several occasions been invited as poet and as a guest story-teller to Mauritius and to the Conference of Word Affairs in Boulder, Colorado. He has participated in Poetry Africa and an International Poetry Festival in Colombia South America.


The Creative Wordshop
The School for the Hearing Impaired shares a campus with the School for the Visually Impaired and the School for the Mentally Challenged in Windhoek . All three NISE schools plus satellite campuses in the rest of the country face many challenges. – staff motivation, student emotional issues , low pass rates etc.

"I believe that stories can begin to address these challenges."

"I wish to facilitate story workshops for stories appeal to all the five senses. In appealing to both parts of the brain, they have a way of getting through to people despite the loss of one of the senses (in this case hearing and sight). Stories also reach people where certain neural pathway are blocked because of a degree of mental handicap.. Stories bridge the language gap and open up the creative world to these young people and their teaches who often struggle on without resources."

The aim of the staff and children’s workshops will be to:

• encourage the creation of stories featuring characters with hearing, sight or mental impairment. 
• address challenges around using stories in their situation 
• develop symbolic thought 
• improve their English language competence 
• build up a bank of stories 
• explore the use of stories across the curriculum
• restore hope, vision and enthusiasm

Previous projects 

2014-2016:       Story-telling Wordshops
2011-2013:       Story-telling Workshops                                                                  

2010:                Creative Journal Course for Students Teacher ans Staff                      

2009:                Creative Writing Course  and Creative Journalling Course                   

2007-2008:       Creative Journal Course                                                                   

2005:                AIDS Experience                                                                             

2003:                My Story: Building selfesteem...                                                       

2001:                Workshops: Writing & Story-Telling                                                   

1999:                Life Stories: Writing in the Townships                                                

1997:                Life Stories: Writing with the Elderly                                                           1997:                The Inner Eye: Namibian Poetry in Process                                                  1995:                Creative Writing Phase I & II                                                                                   

Publications in the BAB Publishing House

2014:                Mirror, Lens and Window
2006:                Seven Letters, HIV/AIDS Stories from Namibian Children
2003:                Personal Memories, Namibian Texts in Process
2001:                The Inner Eye