Training and Professional Development for Writers in Wales
Career Development for Writers in Health and Social Care, and with Young People Experiencing Social Exclusion
Report by Tony Bianchi
SUMMARY
My research led me to the following conclusions and recommendations. I must stress that the field is highly diverse, while my research period was brief. There are many lacunae which will need to be filled, and many important agencies whom I did not contact or who, for whatever reason, failed to respond to my requests for information. These include most NHS trusts and local authority arts development officers, and many writers active in the target areas. I received, in all, the views of 48 individuals and agencies.
Conclusions
The field is diverse and complex. To gain an accurate impression of my findings, the reader should refer to the Digest of Responses in Appendix 1. Nevertheless, I arrived at a few, quite simple conclusions:
· there are more writers active, or wishing to be active, in the designated fields (particularly health care) than anticipated. They display great enthusiasm at the prospect of increased opportunities and an impressive degree of personal initiative;
· there are also many more agencies than expected, particularly those involved in inclusion; relatively few of them, other than the Academi itself, provide continuity and depth of support and back–up for writing projects;
· the writers lack a network through which they can come to know one another, share skills, learn of opportunities and thereby develop their careers; they feel this lack more acutely than they feel the lack of formal training;
· the agencies lack the channels of communication and collaboration which would help establish good practice, avoid duplication of effort, facilitate training provision, increase sustainability of activity and strengthen advocacy to funders;
· the Academi is taking a bold and exciting initiative in an area where, because of resource constraints, its involvement has to date been largely ad hoc. This development will require it to develop policies and priorities which make clear its role in the specific areas of health and community arts, as it has already done in connection with its roles as a writers’ organization and a general literature promoter.
· There is throughout the literature field a fault-line between those who embrace what they feel to be the inherent values of writing and those who wish to develop its more instrumental uses. The Academi has, in recent years, achieved an effective balance between these sometimes conflicting outlooks; however, any major new initiative of the kind being contemplated might well put that balance to the test. This possible difficulty regarding perceptions of the Academi’s ethos needs to be anticipated and managed.
Recommendations
All the recommendations derive from the above conclusions. They also presume that it is the Academi which will take the lead role in developing activity.
· the Academi should develop clear policy statements regarding activity in the designated areas, to ensure that its role is understood by all – including potential partners who may have a limited understanding of the Academi’s work - and to strengthen advocacy. This will include clarification of support for various kinds of oral narration and mixed-media projects
· the Academi should develop, for open access, a searchable data-base of writers and the specific skills they can offer in the designated fields
· the Academi should develop a project data-base, for its own use and that of partners and writers. This will provide a factual archive and, when possible, delineate good practice (through including project reports, work produced, etc.)
· the Academi should establish consultative relationships with the main providers in the designated areas, and exchange information (particularly project reports) in order to promote good practice and skill sharing
· the Academi should, with regard to continuing training provision, work in close association with other agencies in Wales which have an express interest in training, in particular ADW, Arts Care, ATW, Ty Newydd, Dryw, Writers in Prison Network, the Society of Storytellers, RCT, Cardiff University and the proposed University College Bangor and University of Glamorgan MAs (in addition, of course, to Literaturetraining)
· the Academi should ensure that one of its officers to become fully acquainted with literature in these fields, and with the activities of relevant organizations, in Wales and outside, in order to provide practical advice to writers wishing to work in these fields. This lead officer should attend, as appropriate, training courses provided by the Literaturetraining consortium and others
· the Academi’s advice to writers should be sufficient to enable them to pursue opportunities for training and employment on their own initiative. For this reason it should publish on its website step-by-step guidelines to working in these fields in Wales, together with signposting to other sources of information, e.g. Lapidus, NAWE, Writers in Prison Network, Dryw, University of Sussex MA, U Glam MA, names and contact details of local county arts development officers, bibliographies, accessible case studies, etc.
· the Academi’s pro-active work in these areas should be directed at partnerships with organizations which have a good record of provision, have a strong artistic team, already work with other agencies, can access non-arts funding and can offer sustainability: its role may, more often than not, be that of advocate, catalyst and contributor of specific expertise rather than promoter. It should not, as far as is possible, add another tier to the pyramid of agencies already working in health and social inclusion
· the Academi should facilitate the setting up of network(s) of Welsh writers working in these sectors. In the case of healthcare, such a network will most probably take the form of a Lapidus regional group, to facilitate peer contact with writers both within and beyond Wales. The pilot project will provide an opportunity for recruitment. A network of Welsh writers working in contexts of exclusion would be useful, and may be achieved through building on NAWE membership. However, a dedicated e-mail discussion group might be better targeted and more quickly achieved
· for the purposes of the 2004 pilot (but also for more sustained activity), the Academi is advised to consider an inclusion project in partnership with a host organization which has already demonstrated good practice over time, can work sympathetically with the training element of the initiative and can add new dimensions to the Academi’s work to date. Such organizations include the Writers in Prison Network, Valley and Vale Community Arts, RCT and Valleys Kids.
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Aims of Research
The original research brief required me to:
· establish the training and professional development needs of Welsh creative writers working through the medium of English and/or Welsh
· identify the issues relating to the uses of creative writing in health and social care, and working with young people experiencing social exclusion, and the associated training needs for writers.
Because of acute time constraints (15 days were allocated), it was agreed:
· that, to ensure parity of treatment, detailed consideration of issues specific to Welsh-language writing be deferred, until such time as a Welsh-language pilot project is planned
· that my attention be focused primarily upon the designated development areas (writing in health care and social care, and with young people) rather than upon general career development
· that I do not attempt an audit of the field
· that, in identifying issues and needs, I avoid merely repeating what has been clearly demonstrated and explained elsewhere.
What follows reflects these priorities; however, not surprisingly, the responses of writers frequently stressed practical, work-related concerns, rather than broader developmental ones. I have recorded these here, as they will contribute to the bank of expertise and practice which the Academi will need to establish and draw upon in order to progress this work in Wales. They also show the generosity with which most writers are willing to share their experience and skills with others: this augers well for the future.
Preliminary
Writing in Health and Social Care
There is now a considerable literature relating to the use of creative writing in health and social care. It was not part of my brief to review this literature; however, it is useful to preface my findings and recommendations with some well-established principles, derived from good practice elsewhere. If the Academi is to develop coherent practice in Wales, it will need to absorb and apply these, in addition to lessons learned on the ground, and devise ways of sharing them with writers and promoters.
These are just a few cautionary points derived mainly (with little attempt at paraphrase) from Fiona Sampson’s unpublished PhD thesis and her Creative Writing in Health and Social Care (Jessica Kingsley, 2004 forthcoming):
· models are important to the development of skills and good practice amongst writers and providers alike: Fiona Sampson’s Kingfisher project at Salisbury is one from which much can be learned. Her booklet, The Healing Word (poetry Society 1999) is an excellent, short, practical handbook for writers and project coordinators wishing to embark on work in healthcare. There are articles by many writers employed in healthcare settings on the NAWE website and in its journal, Writing in Education. The Academi will need to assimilate and apply such models appropriately;
· however, as Sampson herself agues, there is a risk in using even highly successful projects to create paradigms. This can lead to typically clinical ways of thinking about practice and recreate forms of authority which run counter to the purpose of writing in health care. Writing exists side-by-side with clinical practice, may even happen as a result of clinical referral, and must always complement it: however, the two discourses are fundamentally different. Writers bring specifically literary skills to workshops, without the systematic interpretative agenda that psychoanalytic art therapy or counselling use. Indeed, the benefits of writing cannot be found in such an agenda: rather, it creates a space in which health care users can exercise an authority of their own. It is important to understand this point when advocating the case for writing in healthcare, both to hosts and to writers, both of whom may have suspicions about its legitimacy. Case studies in Sampson (2004) tellingly illustrate this point;
· writing activity in healthcare achieved through the arts infrastructure is, by and large, short-term and pragmatic. Lack of continuity is a major obstacle to developing the field. Opportunities must be sought, therefore, to build the case for the inclusion of writing into clinical policy. This will inevitably be an incremental process, to be won on many fronts. Again, the advocacy role of the Academi will be all-important. Strategies for achieving this end have been researched and elaborated by Fiona Sampson and should be studied;
· nevertheless, funding responsibility for writing in health care will remain, at least for the time being, largely in the hands of arts organizations: this will require the Academi to embrace an equally important advocacy role vis-a-vis the Arts Council, local authorities, the voluntary sector and other potential funders and partners. Robust arguments and sound evidence will need to be employed repeatedly to make the case for the practice;
· such advocacy will require appropriate evaluation processes and well-documented case histories. Graham Hartill’s Creative Writing: towards a framework for evaluation and Fiona Sampson’s chapter on Evaluating Creative Writing in Health Care: Some Principles (in Sampson, op. cit.) illustrate the kinds of structured but non-quantitative approaches which the Academi and its partners will need to embrace if the field as a whole is to develop;
· the field is multi-faceted, often bewilderingly so to those unfamiliar with the health and social care sectors and their agencies, the specific needs and abilities of different user groups, and the different skills which writers bring with them. This is not a weakness. Instead of trying to impose artificially precise and prescriptive definitions upon the field, it is better to map the diversity and draw upon it as appropriate;
· the term ‘training’ is being ousted by the less mechanistic phrase, ‘career development’. However, this should not disguise the fact that, as Sampson observes, a visiting writer generally does not have the kind of knowledge and experience relevant to the user group in question, which carers and clinicians are required to possess. Ethical issues are therefore of considerable importance, and arrangements for formal line-management and supervision need to be built in to each project. Although they are not counsellors, writers are working ‘with vulnerable people in some of the same contexts and management structures’. (Sampson, op. cit. p.230).
Writing with Young People Experiencing Exclusion
A few of the precepts outlined above apply also to work with disaffected or excluded young people. There are in the latter group, however, specific social dynamics at work relating to age, poverty, class, literacy, drug abuse, antipathy towards institutional spaces, and a peer group culture which is deliberately exclusive of adult intervention. These can present problems to the incoming writer much more intractable than in many healthcare settings. Moreover, activities are rarely manageable in the same discrete, enclosed, observable way that they are for much writing activity in healthcare. Literature models, therefore, are scantier, and guidelines more tentative. Although Welsh Assembly Government’s (WAG) Learning Society and Communities First initiatives have provided the impetus and, to a degree, the funds to work effectively in areas of acute deprivation, there are deficits not only in skills but in basic approaches and planning.
My single cautionary point here is derived from novelist Des Barry’s forthcoming paper: Community Based Projects in Creative Writing in the Process of Regeneration.
· The object of working with disaffected, demotivated young people is to help them re-empower themselves and exercise control over their lives. The first purpose of the creative writer working with such a group, therefore, is to help give members confidence in their own vernacular, their own expressive powers, their own stories. The result may be oral rather than written and may be ungrammatical by conventional standards, but it may also, as Des Barry experienced, be full of genuine expressive qualities - suspense, dramatic incident and the vivid grotesquery which characterises the tradition of Valleys story-telling. None of the latter will happen, however, if the project and the writer are hung up on literacy or on ‘literary’ tasks and outcomes. ‘Creative Writing classes,’ says Des Barry, ‘are a means for the members of the Learning Country to express themselves in a way that is both powerful and enjoyable. As a reintroduction to learning, Creative Writing Workshops allow participants to speak their own language without being told that it is grammatically wrong or socially unacceptable. As Booker Prizewinner James Kelman has pointed out, “There’s no such thing as bad language.” ‘(Des Barry, op. cit. p.22).
The Academi needs to examine and define the nature of its commitment to this kind of activity which does not have the same literary or writerly goals that the organization has traditionally embraced. It may find it helpful to refer to the goals and methods of community arts organizations which have an established record in the promotion of writing
Existing Provision in the Areas of Health and Social Care and Social Exclusion
Data
There is no easily searchable, coherent bank of data concerning work in Wales in the designated fields. Although activity has increased in recent years, it has been promoted by a range of organizations and hosts, local and national, who do not as a rule exchange information or maintain dedicated databases. Moreover, the fields investigated are extremely diverse and involve a vast range of voluntary and statutory agencies, with varying degrees of commitment and competence. Only very recently have developmental bodies, such as the Academi (AG) and Arts Training Wales (ATW) begun to seek models of good practice specific to these areas and to give attention to their creative, strategic, financial and organizational demands.
Activity
It was impossible, within the time available, to conduct a comprehensive audit of provision (of both activity and information). File searches yielded the following activities funded or part-promoted by the Academi through its Residencies, Writers on Tour and Literature Development budgets. These at least give some idea of the current range of provision and partnerships.
Extended activity in designated areas 2000-3:
· All Lit Up inclusion project in Rhondda Cynon Taff, with Paul Hamlyn sponsorship
· writing workshops, Bronglais Hospital, Aberystwyth
· Powys/ Ceredigion Health Promotion: mental health project in Powys schools
· Art Care writing residencies in Carmarthen area
· Ogmore Centre residential literacy courses
· writing and storytelling at St Kentigern’s Hospice, Denbigh
· youth inclusion work with Caerphilly CC
· Arts Disability Wales: workshops with disabled writers, throughout Wales
· youth workshops, with Basic Skills, Pembrokeshire
· Writers’ Squads for young people, with LEAs throughout Wales
· Hei Hogia boys’ reading project, with Ysgol Glan Clwyd & Ysgol Dinas Bran
· literacy project, Gwynedd, with Cynnal
· with Gwynedd CC, youth project at Sarn
· writing project with North Wales Boys & Girls Clubs, Llandrillo Youth Club
· writing project with Denbigh CC, Rhyl West Young People’s Project & Uned Rhuallt
· writing project with Denbigh CC, County Disability Forum
· writer’s residence in youth clubs, with Flint CC,
· writing workshop with RNID
· writing workshops with Basic Skills Holiday Scheme, Haverfordwest
· literary sessions at Day Hospice, Ystrad Mynach, with St David’s Foundation
· Literature Days in the Miners Welfare in Ystradgynlais and in Llwyn Hall in Llwyn Hendy near Llanelli, with DACE, Swansea University..
Other relevant but shorter-term work is supported through the Writers on Tour scheme.
There are also a number of long-term local providers, including local authorities, libraries, community arts agencies, departments of lifelong learning and voluntary bodies, which frequently do not draw on AG funding and therefore do not appear in the above list. A search needs to be done at some stage to identify potential partners. Examples include
· the Dragon Arts Centre, Swansea, run by the Cyrenians charity. It provides free arts and training classes and opportunities to anyone who has experienced homelessness or social exclusion and who may have difficulty accessing mainstream education. Regular writing workshops are convened by Sally Roberts Jones;
· DACE, Swansea: runs a creative writing programme across the region (Llandeilo to Llanelli, Burry Port to Baglan, Ammanford to Swansea), involving a committed group of writers and tutors in pubs, hotels, Dylan Thomas’s birthplace, mobile library, day centres, hospices and libraries;
· writing work done within the wide purviews of organizations like Carad (Rhayader), Arts Connexion (Llanfyllin), Valley and Vale Community Arts and Valleys Kids: all revenue clients of the Arts Council of Wales, and able to deliver sustainable, professionally managed activity.
Advice and Information
· AG’s website offers a list of writers which includes many practitioners relevant to the designated fields. Their skills and experience are not consistently or comprehensively recorded, however, nor is the list searchable, to aid potential host organizations and promoters.
· AG staff can draw on their own expertise and on AG files and data-bases to help enquirers, but they too are hampered by the diffuse, piecemeal, and generally sketchy nature of the information held. Whilst for accountability/ paper-trail purposes, documentation should continue to be kept to the absolute minimum required, there is need for more coherent information gathering about key projects, to inform future activity
· see also Cultural Enterprise and Business Eye below.
Funding
Funding sources are referred to inter alia below (in particular, Arts Council of Wales and Cultural Enterprise). In anticipation of increased demand and activity following the pilot project, AG will need to develop a funding strategy which takes into account:
· proportions of existing AG funds which can be diverted to the targeted areas without damaging other areas of work
· the scope for increased ACW revenue funding
· the scope for ACW project funding
· the scope for funding from independent trusts
· the scope for funding from potential partners
· the scope for contributions from non-arts sources (primarily European funds channeled through local authorities)
CONSULTATIONS: FINDINGS
Views of individuals and organizations were gathered as follows. Several straddle the given categories. A digest of most responses received is given in Appendix 1.
The literature/arts sectors
Selected writers at differing stages of their career who have either had experience of working with young people and/or health and social care or who are interested in doing so.
The main issues and needs which emerged were:
· the relationship between writers and host staff needs to be improved, through better pre-project communication and preparation, fuller definition and discussion of aims, and staff inclusion in activities
· there is a need for better understanding of roles on all sides of project partnerships: in particular, writers should be seen as writers, not therapists,
· informal networking, peer support groups and skill sharing are the most important aids to professional development
· a specifcally Welsh network, with regular face-to-face contact, would ease a sense of isolation
· small-scale, local, targeted, project-related training is best
· models and techniques of good practice need to be shared between organisations and made accessible
· there is some scope for generic training (e.g. regarding behavioural problems which might be encountered, ways of achieving a sense of empowerment in target groups, issues of activity location), but this must be carefully planned to avoid woolliness
· personal aptitude and life experience of writer (especially as service user or worker) are very important in engaging with groups in these areas
· opportunities for shadowing/ mentoring would be generally, but not universally, welcomed
· projects should be longer term (at least 10 sessions) to allow for proper attention to process
· a clear, incremental structure is important, although flexibility must be safeguarded
· machinery must be set in place, where possible, to ensure continuation of project after writer’s departure
· end-products (but not formal ‘outputs’) are important for enhancing morale and commitment
· there is scope to learn from other, better entrenched art forms, e.g. TIE
· cross-artform projects offer advantages of flexibility and new creative possibilities
· there is a need to establish good practice relating to oral material and its transcription/ editing/ publication.
Key umbrella bodies, organizations and groups
A digest of the responses received is given in Appendix 1.The main contributions which responding organisations can make are:
Arts Council of Wales: ACW is, once more, in a state of flux, and a new raft of schemes is in preparation. The continuing decline in Lottery revenue will put increasing pressure on project funding; however, WAG has committed itself vigorously to the arts as a major catalyst of social regeneration, a commitment which ought to be realised both in Community First plans, and in the priorities it will agree with ACW for the latter’s strategic plan. Activity of the kind the Academi will be seeking to promote is therefore likely to be well regarded, in respect both of direct project funding and of funding for the revenue clients (community arts organisations) which may be the Academi’s partners.
ACW can also offer financial support for relevant activity through its Night Out scheme.
Arts Care: the national body which offers the most consistent and best prepared provision of creative writing activities in health care in Wales. Is also the arts body which has the best understanding of most user groups. For these reasons it is a crucial partner in any development of the field, and it is keen to be further involved. Its recent literary activity, done in association with AG, has been restricted largely to Carmarthenshire. AC can draw on large bank of relevant experience to help in defining and structuring training for writers and creating paradigms of good practice
Arts Disability Wales: although, in the main, not working in the care sector, provides a model for integrating training into large creative writing project; also offers general disability training for writers who wish to work in this area
Lapidus: I mention this organization simply to note that it has only eight members in Wales and that there is no Welsh group. I have communicated with five of the eight and each testifies to the importance of the organization and the peer-sharing which it allows, but lament their sense of isolation otherwise. NAWE membership shows the same rather low level of Welsh take-up:34 of this organisation’s members are in Wales (only 2.9%of a total of 1190),
Writers in Prison Network: has a Welsh address and one of its main practitioners, Clive Hopwood, lives and does much of his work in north Wales. It offers a five-day specialist course on working in the arts within criminal justice settings, followed by a one-week placement opportunity. It also offers a wide range of bespoke courses. Despite considerable growth and success in England, it has yet to make much headway in Wales, but is keen to be involved.
Individuals working in literature and arts development.
I met for in-depth discussions with Fiona Sampson (in Oxford), Richie Turner (at ACW, Cardiff), Graham Hartill (at Llanbedr, Crickhowell), Lloyd Robson (in Cardiff), and Professor Hamish Fyfe (at the University of Glamorgan, Trefforest). See summaries in Appendix 1 and above.
I received from Rose Flint, Fiona Hamilton and Claire Williamson their paper: Core Competencies for Writing in Healthcare (Appendix 2), which usefully summarises what is required of both the writer who wishes to work in the sector and of the healthcare provider.
Promoters and potential promoters in education, health and social care, and community arts
I consulted five local authority arts development officers and two community arts agencies (see Appendix 1). The level of response from the health sector was disappointing. The main issues arising from responses were:
· the current growth in arts work related to community regeneration offers writers new opportunities in out-of-school work with young people: they are in competition, however, with other, better established artform practices and with other social and educational priorities. Knowledge of what writers can offer is also very uneven amongst educational and social providers
· oral narration (including storytelling) is often much more successful in engaging the target groups, particularly young people
· non-arts funding can be turned to arts uses, if those uses are integrated into areas of health and social provision prioritised by WAG (e.g. in the context of Community First, drug dependency initiatives, etc.)
· given current funding patterns (reduced Lottery revenue, very tight NHS budgets, increased spending on the social inclusion agenda), health sector work is more likely to remain dependent on arts funding than inclusion work