Write Here: Sanctuary Project Brief

About Writing East Midlands

Writing East Midlands is the writer development agency for the region and supports, promotes and champions writing from the East Midlands to create opportunities for practising writers and to discover new writers of quality.
To do this we:
* Find and develop new talent;
* Raise awareness of writers and writing in the East Midlands;
* Support publishing in the region;
* Encourage writing from all cultural backgrounds;
* Expand the writer economy in the region and
* Develop partnerships and broker new relationships.
* Promote East Midlands' writers locally, nationally and internationally.
We value openness, equal access to the means of creativity, freedom of expression and the removal of barriers to creative thought and writing. These values underpin the agency's development work with writers, literature events, projects, and relationships with partners.

About Write Here Residencies

Our Write Here residencies team up writers with venues and organisations to nurture and develop creative talent.

Write Hereis Writing East Midlands’ Writer in Residence Programme. Since 2009 we have run over 40 residencies and placed writers in all the major cities and towns in the East Midlands. We’ve worked with primary and secondary schools, as well as with a range of organisations and institutions including a three year project working with the Roma community in Leicester experiencing high levels exclusion and low levels of access to artistic activity and also delivered writing residencies in Nottingham Contemporary, HMP Sudbury and New Walk Museum Leicester. In schools our writing projects help children and young people to discover their creative skills. The value of Write Here residencies can’t be overstated, both for the local communities and audiences and for the writers in place.

About Write Here: Sanctuary

Writing East Midlands will be working in three cities, Nottingham, Leicester and Derby to deliver three writing residencies to contribute to a culture of welcome and inclusion for refugees, asylum seekers and new arrivals by creating safe spaces for creative expression. The aims of the project are to:

i)Encourage participation in creative activity from refugee and other recently arrived groups

ii)Encourage aspiring writers from local communities to share in spoken word, story­ telling and creative writing activities with refugee groups

iii)Produce events for public audiences

iv)Produce new creative work made accessible online

v)Produce an anthology of new work for public distribution

Working in partnership with the Cities of Sanctuary and other refugee support groups in Derby, Nottingham and Leicester, we will engage refugees from Eastern Europe, the Middle East and North Africa in spoken word, story­telling and creative writing activities to enable them to tell their stories, articulate their identities and provide a platform for their creative self-expression.

Bespoke writer­led programmes taking place across 45 sessions over 10 months in 3 East Midlands cities, will enable participants to draw upon their lives, experiences, changing environments and literary cultures to build their confidence in using English. Sessions will be aimed at drawing upon the participant's literary cultures, own stories and changing sense of place, to generate new content, free style writing, spoken word and composition. Write Here Sanctuary is funded by Arts Council England, the Paul Hamlyn Foundation and the Rayne Foundation.

Write Here Sanctuary aims to explore and articulate what difference creative writing can make to the social inclusion of refugees in the UK, particularly with reference to the impact on the health and wellbeing of vulnerable groups.
We hope to better understand the best approach to adopt in working with transient groups, with particular reference to the difficulties such groups face in accessing the arts, and in working with people of mixed countries of origin and cultures. Such findings will be collated into a best practice toolkit which will then be used as an advocacy document and disseminated to other organisations interesting in building work in this area.

Write Here Sanctuary - Writer in Residence Brief – Shadow Writer

FREELANCE SHADOW WRITER –IN–RESIDENCE – 3 positions available in Nottingham, Derby and Leicester

Writing East Midlands is looking for a number of emerging writers and workshop facilitators,with strong interest in community based work and writing for health and wellbeing to work with us on a new and exciting project, Write Here: Sanctuary. The Shadow Writers will work in support of the Lead Writers for this project.

The successful candidate will have:

Proven literary ability evidenced by a publication history, or history of performance and/or public outputs

Interest and sensitivity and understanding of community arts programmes

A flexible and welcoming workshop approach

Sensitivity to the special demands of working with diversity and across generations and cultures and a willingness to develop skills in this area

The willingness to act as an advocate for the values and benefits of the project, and to the connection between arts, literature, community cohesion and health and wellbeing

An interest in/experience of working with diverse and potentially vulnerable groups

A sensitive, diplomatic and approachable nature and willing to nurture creativity regardless of ability

It is envisaged that this position will require a time commitment of one session per week (2 hours each)of up to 15 sessions. There is flexibility around timescales due to the requirements of the lead writer and the partner groups, but it is envisioned that the project will start from September through to December

A fee of £1500 is available which is inclusive of VAT

Additional travel expenses are available

Interested writers should send a letter of application detailing their workshop facilitation experience in related settings or ambitions and why they would like to work with refugees and asylum seekers, plus a creative CV and short work samples (1200 words max) to by 5pm 13th July.

Interviews will be in Nottingham on Thursday 21st July.

Writer-in-Residence – Shadow Writer

Writing East Midlands seeks a number of shadow writers to work in residence at each City of Sanctuary or other refugee support groups in Nottingham, Derby and Leicester. Theshadow writer will:

  • Assist the Lead Writer to plan and facilitate up to 15 two hour creative writing workshops with the chosen group, with a focus on welcome, inclusion, community cohesion and writing for health and wellbeing purposes.
  • The group will consist of individuals from diverse backgrounds with different cultures and languages and this is to be welcomed and celebrated as a part of the project. The workshops will aim to improve the participant’s confidence in expressing themselves in using English through the medium of Creative Writing.
  • Be responsive and sensitive to the group and individual members interests and needs, and be open in their workshop and sharing approach
  • Be instrumental in collating evaluative data on the group’s experience, and also track their own process through the creative project.
  • Work with the lead writer and project partners to deliver the workshops and collate qualitive and quantitate data through the process
  • Potentially work with the group on performance skills or a public sharing of the work produced if applicable.