A Balikbayan Box for Nursing: artists and writers in residence

Our Arts Council National Lottery funded project takes the Filipino custom of the Balikbayan Box as its central theme, inspired by Romalyn Ante's poem Notes Inside a Balikbayan Box. The Balikbayan Box is a long-standing Filipino cultural practice through which we are exploring the spirit of nursing across borders and boundaries.  

Our writers each ran a writing workshop for a different audience to help them engage with the exhibition themes, and develop their own writing skills: refugees, schoolchildren and young adults.

Writing residencies ran in the RCN Library and Museum (20 Cavendish Square) from April – June 2026. Our writers were based in the Moved to Care exhibition space in the England Library from 11am-4pm during their residency week. Visitors could drop in and chat to them between 3-4pm, and members attended free half-hour 121 slots to discuss their writing, ask questions about publication or the role of art and creativity in nursing.

As part of the project, we also ran a family day on 30 May where we invited two other artists to run workshops. Abolore Sobayo led a family workshop making memory boxes, and Marcus Orlandi ran a session for refugees and asylum seekers from Fences & Frontiers making fabric banners to explore new ways to express their journeys and think about the people and places left behind, and the tastes, smells and sights that stay with them.

Some of the poetry and flags created in these workshops is on display from Refugee Week onwards in the Trampoline Café, which provides training and employment for refugees to help shape their future. There is no need to book to visit, just drop in during our opening hours.

Collage of refugee banner-making workshop Memory box

Romalyn Ante FRSL is an award-winning Filipino-born British nurse, poet, novelist, and editor, based in the Midlands. Romalyn was born and raised in Lipa, Philippines, and migrated to the UK in 2005. She writes in English as her second language. In 2012, she began writing poetry after completing her nursing studies and becoming a registered nurse. Her works include Antiemetic for Homesickness (Chatto, 2020), AGIMAT (Chatto, 2024), and her debut novel, The Left-Behind Child, will be published by Chatto in August 2026.

Jennifer Wong is the author of Light Year (Nine Arches Press, 2026), 回家 Letters Home (Nine Arches Press, 2020), and pamphlets including time difference (Verve, 2024) and Diary of a Miu Miu Salesgirl (Bitter Melon Poetry). She studied at Oxford and has a PhD in creative writing from Oxford Brookes University. She is a visiting lecturer at University of Hong Kong for Spring 2026. Currently, she is also editing a Rebecca Swift Foundation anthology entitled Woman, Mapped (Fly on the Wall Press, 2026).

Christie Watson is a best-selling, award winning writer and Professor of Creative Writing at UEA. She has published eight books: four novels, including her first novel Tiny Sunbirds Far Away, which won the Costa First Novel Award, and four works of non-fiction, including nursing memoir, The Language of Kindness which was a number one Sunday Times bestseller and spent five months in the Top Ten Bestseller list. Killing Me Softly, her latest novel, will be released March 2026.