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Working in partnership with award-winning Brighton-based charity Creative Future to offer a free workshop to writers who feel they have lacked professional development or showcasing opportunities due to mental health, disability, ethnicity, sexual identity and / or social circumstance.

 

Workshop 1. WAYS OF SEEING – venue The Twelve Tellers board room 15 Church St, Preston PR1 3BQ

We used stories and poems to explain our world to ourselves and each other, but all of us see the world in slightly different ways. These personal perceptions are part of what makes our authorial voices unique. The words we use may be shared, but they are also our own. Using group discussion, personal reflection, and writing exercises these workshops  helped writers at any stage of their career rediscover their own individual authorial voice.

Workshop 2. SHAPE AND STRUCTURE venue The Twelve Tellers board room 15 Church St, Preston PR1 3BQ

Poems make shapes on the page. Stories create their own structure. The best writers know how to make space and silence work for them, creating shapes where there was nothing. From the traditional to the experimental, these structures can convey meaning and support the reader’s journey. Using discussion, reflection, and practical exercises this workshop helped writers at any stage of their career understand how to effectively use shape and structure in their writing.

Workshop 3. WORKING THE IMAGINATION  The Twelve Tellers board room 15 Church St, Preston PR1 3BQ

The most memorable writing surprises us. A good writer leaves a legacy of ideas and images that stays with us long after we have finished reading. If we want to write something that is enduring we must also reflect deeply, and begin by asking what is possible. Using group discussion, personal reflection, and writing exercises this workshop helped writers at any stage of their career to unlock their own inner creativity.

About Creative Future
Founded in 2007, Brighton-based charity Creative Future provides training, mentoring and the chance to publish or exhibit to talented people who lack opportunities due to mental health issues, disability, or social circumstance. In addition to our flagship events like the Creative Future Literary Awards (CFLA) we also run an annual programme of workshops and course throughout the South East for writers and visual artists at all levels of experience and ability.
About the Creative Future Literary Awards
In 2013 we launched the Creative Future Literary Awards, the UK’s first and only national literary competition which celebrates talented marginalised writers. Winners are selected by a panel of industry experts. Prizes include £1000 of cash prizes alongside professional development opportunities. Our high-profile showcase event features a selection of readings from award-winners as well as critically acclaimed guest writers. Winning submissions are also published in an anthology, available in hard copy and as an e-book. In 2016 we will also be piloting an innovative new Writer in Residence scheme, in which we place a talented mid-career writer in a social care organisation.

About the CFLA Workshop Facilitator
Each of our workshops is run by award-winning writer Pat Winslow. Pat has over 20 years’ experience delivering creative writing workshops to vulnerable adults and marginalised communities. She was Writer in Residence at HMP Long Lartin for seven years and has delivered workshops in partnership with a number of care agencies including Manchester Alcohol Services, Oxford Social Services, and the Order of St John Care Homes. These projects have seen her work with a wide range of people, including: people with learning difficulties, people with mental health issues, people living with Cystic Fibrosis, care leavers, at-risk young people, offenders and ex-offenders, homeless people, and elders.
In addition to her extensive experience as a workshop facilitator, Pat is also an accomplished writer. She has released seven collections of poetry and her short stories have been featured in a number of critically acclaimed anthologies such as Parenthesis (Comma Press) and No Limits (Crocus Books). Pat has won a number of major literary prizes including the Wilfred Owen Poetry Award; the Guernsey International Poetry Competition; the Keats-Shelley Prize; the Rialto Nature Poetry Prize; the Poetry London Competition; the Bridport Poetry Prize, and the BBC Alfred Bradley Award. Her most recent poetry collection Kissing Bones is published by Templar Press.
‘I am really pleased to be Creative Future’s Literary Awards Workshop Facilitator,’ says Pat. ‘I’m looking forward to meeting many talented writers – I know you’re out there! It’s always a privilege for me to engage with people’s creative processes and to be given the chance to discover the world again – because that’s what good writing does – it makes sights and sounds and smells seem brand new.’
You can find more information about Pat’s work (both as a writer and as a workshop facilitator) at her website – http://www.patwinslow.com/
The CFLA Project Manager Fergus Evans will support Pat at each workshop. Fergus has been working in Arts Administration for over 15 years. Prior to managing the CFLAs he was a Relationship Manager for Arts Council England and was Literature Producer for Queer Up North Festival. Fergus is also a nationally touring theatre-maker and poet; He is an Associate Artist with The Albany and a NWS10 Writer with New Writing South.

About our target participants
Our workshops were available to marginalised writers only. We define ‘marginalised’ as belonging to one or more of the following categories:
•    having a mental health issue
•    having a physical disability
•    having a substance misuse issue
•    being homeless or in temporary accommodation
•    being a refugee
•    being a survivor of abuse
•    being a care leaver
•    being long term unemployed
•    having a learning disability
•    being a carer
•    being an offender or ex-offender
•    being a traveller
•    being part of the BME community
•    being part of the LGBT community
•    being an older person (65+)

At The Foxton Centre

The Above workshops have also been run in tandem as closed workshops for the clients of the Foxton Centre and Base 18 as part of our Foxton Lives proect. Base 18 is an outreach centre for Streetlink provision, with project staff and volunteers making contact and engaging with street sex workers up to three nights per week. The women are offered information, advice, support, and are signposted to a relevant agency i.e. drug services, housing etc.

Read more about Foxton Lives here