Access to creative writing
Natasha Carthew, Isabel Farchy and Andrea Holland
Moderated by Ashley Hickson-Lovence
Tuesday 4 May 2020
11am-12.30pm
Questions of representation in writing, publishing and higher education carry more and more weight as the creative industries are encouraged to examine their structures and assumptions, resulting in a welcome wave of new discussions, festivals, prizes, dedicated imprints and diversity initiatives. But is this enough to democratise access to creative writing? And what is the role of teachers and practitioners in this landscape? How do we handle such questions in the classroom, and in our own work?
Image credit: "University Library" by uniinnsbruck is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0
Natasha Carthew is a nature/fiction writer from Cornwall. She has written two books of poetry, three acclaimed young adult novels (‘Winter Damage’, ‘The Light That Gets Lost’ and ‘Only the Ocean’ (published with Bloomsbury)) and her latest adult literary fiction ‘All Rivers Run Free’ Published by Quercus/riverrun. Her new prose-poem ‘Song for the Forgotten’ was published with National Trust Books in 2020 and her latest short-story features in ‘HAG: Forgotten Folk Tales’, published by Virago Press October 2020.
Her new book ‘Born Between Crosses’ is a new sequence of performance poetry celebrating the working lives of working-class women published with Hypatia Publications in April 2021. Natasha has written extensively on the subject of what it means to be a working-class writer and how authentic rural working-class voices are represented in fiction, including ‘The Writers' & Artists' Yearbook’, The Royal Society of Authors Journal, BBC Radio 3, BBC Radio 4, The Guardian, The Dark Mountain Project, The Bookseller, Book Brunch and The Big Issue. Natasha is the Founder and Artistic Director of The Working Class Writers Festival and the Nature Writing Prize for Working Class Writers.
Isabel Farchy is the Founder and CEO of Creative Mentor Network, a charity supporting young people from low socioeconomic backgrounds into creative careers through mentoring.
Isabel started out as a Teach First teacher, working in secondary schools in low-income communities. After four years in the classroom, Isabel went on to work for Teach for Lebanon, training incoming teachers how to teach.
In 2014, back to the UK, and noticing a lack equal of access to the creative industries, Isabel set up Creative Mentor Network. The organisation has now supported over 800 young people through the mentoring programme and partners with 100+ creative businesses including Soho House, Sony Music, lululemon and Facebook.
Andrea Holland is a poet and Lecturer in Creative Writing at UEA. Her collections include ‘Borrowed’ (Smith/Doorstop) and ‘Broadcasting’ (Gatehouse Press) which won the Norfolk Commission for Poetry. She has published many articles on creative writing pedagogy and contributed two chapters to ‘The Portable Poetry Workshop’ (Palgrave Macmillan). Andrea represents UEA at the European Association of Creative Writing Programs and sits on their Executive Board. She is a member of the NAWE Higher Education Committee and contributed to the development of the QAA benchmark statement for creative writing.
Currently Andrea is co-organising the UEA/EACWP CW50 writing conference in May and encourages PG students and others to join the event, which has some stellar keynote speakers (including Bernardine Evaristo), lively panels and roundtables, multilingual workshops and an Open Mic.
Link below:
Ashley Hickson-Lovence is a writer from London currently based in Norwich. While working as a secondary school English teacher, he completed his MA in Creative Writing and Publishing and is currently completing his PhD in Creative and Critical Writing at the University of East Anglia. His debut novel ’The 392’ was released in April 2019. His second novel ’Your Show’ is to be released in Spring 2022.
Teaching Creative Writing Series Overview
Creative writers teach in schools, universities and the community, on retreats, in theatres and in workshops. Teaching is often a key part of a writer’s career, and there are rich possibilities creative arts education across a huge range of contexts. But how do you teach creative writing? Can you? This series offers anyone considering teaching creative writing as part of their career development the opportunity to look in detail at the theory and practice of creative writing pedagogy in a variety of institutional and community settings.
The series will address the historical principles and contemporary critiques of creative writing pedagogy, and how these are responding to wider institutional and societal developments. It will consider in detail the theory and practice of employing these pedagogical skills both within and outside higher education. Attendees will be invited to reflect on future possibilities and challenges for the development of creative writing teaching, enabling a deeper awareness and knowledge of creative writing as a subject of study, a future career, and a creative practice.
Students are not expected to attend all the sessions, but the series has been designed to allow for an arc of learning from theoretical principles to practical engagement.