Education and editorial practice

Inclusive learning, future skills and careful editing

International experience across training and development, neurodiversity, mentoring, education, human capital development and poetry publishing.

Signature programme

Neurodiversity & the Creative Process

Elmi regularly teaches Neurodiversity & the Creative Process, a programme he designed to help writers and artists understand how attention, sensory processing, executive function, associative thinking and fluctuating energy can shape creative work. Combining reflective discussion with practical tools, the course moves beyond deficit-based accounts of neurodivergence and helps participants build flexible, sustainable ways of beginning, developing and completing creative projects.

Explore the asynchronous course

Training and development

Learning designed around people

Advisory and delivery work focused on inclusive learning, professional development and human-centred organisational change.

Neurodiversity

Access, mentoring and creative practice

Specialist non-medical help mentoring and neurodiversity-informed education, attentive to barriers, strengths, mental health and the conditions in which different minds can do their best work.

Future skills

Humane responses to technological change

Work on access to future skills, inclusion and human capital development in the context of the fourth industrial revolution.

Editorial

Poetry, development and publishing

Associate poetry editor at flipped eye press, supporting writers through close reading, editorial dialogue and the development of distinctive work.

Free self-reflection workbook

Find the principles beneath the practice.

The Practice Compass is a free workbook for writers and performers who want to clarify what drives their work, what it serves and how they want to practise. Its questions move through purpose, values, non-negotiables, aesthetics, lineage, audience, ethics, masking, authenticity and the role of the poet or performer.

The final pages help participants turn reflection into a concise practice compass and one realistic 30-day experiment. It is an educational tool, not a test, diagnosis or therapeutic assessment.

Download the free PDFTry the guided taster
Approach

Creative rigour and access belong in the same room.

Elmi’s educational practice combines clear structures with responsiveness to individual learning styles. The aim is not simply to invite people into existing systems, but to examine how those systems can be made more equitable, imaginative and useful.

His teaching treats creative process as something that can be observed, adapted and supported rather than disciplined into a single “correct” method. Participants are encouraged to recognise their own patterns, make deliberate use of their strengths and develop realistic strategies for friction points without sanding away the distinctiveness of their thinking.

His experience spans international training and development, one-to-one mentoring, neurodiversity and education specialism, human capital development and creative learning. This work is informed by his parallel practice as a writer, musician and editor.

Samatar Elmi smiling in a black cap
Samatar Elmi.
For organisations

Commissioned learning and development

Programmes can be shaped for educational institutions, arts organisations, workplaces and community settings, with scope agreed around the people, context, access needs and desired outcomes.

Discuss a programmeOne-to-one services
Selected roles

Practice at a glance

Credentials for introductions, proposals and partnership conversations.

Obsidian Fellow

Part of a community supporting Black poets and their creative development.

Associate poetry editor

flipped eye press.

Specialist mentor and adviser

Neurodiversity, education, training, development and future skills.