Training and Professional Development for Writers in Wales
• successful activity can provide good models of practice for future WAG/ local authority support elsewhere
• progressive local authorities are already building partnerships across a wide range of sectors and agencies (e.g. life-long learning provision, local health trusts, health charities, community trusts) in arts activity
• one authority (RCT – there may be others) can incorporate training into their community arts strategies
• the Academi is an appreciated partner but some detect an ambivalence in its attitude to community arts work
• there is great enthusiasm for further collaboration.
Universities offering BA or MA courses (or modules) in creative writing
• Of five responses received, only UCNW Bangor is actively seeking to develop dedicated creative writing work in these areas, both academically and within its community brief. It should be brought into planning structures for the development of future provision, particularly in north Wales
• Cardiff University, however, currently has the most career-orientated, skills-based creative writing MA, with schools placements. There is potential for development into target areas. Should be brought into planning structures for the development of future provision, particularly in south-east Wales
• the University of Glamorgan (Professor Hamish Fyfe) will shortly offer an MA in Arts in the Community, with optional writing modules, and related data-bases: the Academi should offer help in making this course an attractive and practically beneficial one for writers already working in a community context and encourage the setting up of more basic, skills-based modules
• Trinity College Carmarthen has a much more tentative interest, which might respond to further prompting
• respondents from the University of Glamorgan Creative Writing BA are antipathetic to the project and activity in these fields generally.
Training, creative industries and enterprise sectors
Ty Newydd: several courses have been offered which relate, directly or indirectly, to the therapeutic uses of writing, notably Rose Flint and David Hart’s course on Poetry and Healing, which was attended mainly by health care professionals. The courses were popular and well-received. The Director, Sally Baker, is keen to offer more courses of this kind, for which she is sure there is adequate demand.
Arts Training Wales: the Literature & Publishing section of the ATW report, Inspiration-Aspiration-Dedication (2002), is being revised and corrected by a specialist panel made up of Sally Baker (Ty Newydd), Lleucu Siencyn (Academi) and Elwyn Jones (Welsh Books Council). As it stands, the section makes little practical contribution to debate or policy. I conferred with Sally at the beginning and towards the end of my period of research. She supports my conclusions.
Lynnette Rees: an independent provider, in south Wales, of on-line creative writing courses, including a writing-as-self-therapy course, apparently aimed primarily at the American market. I mention her merely to illustrate the diversity of initiatives in this area.
Business Eye: offers general advice to those, including free-lance workers and sole-traders, who wish to develop their business skills. It offers information about training courses: few of these, however, relate specifically to creative industries, and none in the 2003-4 schedule are concerned with literary practice. Business Eye answers queries from writers with its Freelance Writer advice sheet, which has little relevance to the areas under discussion here. Officers can offer one-to-one meetings but are unlikely to have specialist knowledge in any arts discipline.
Cultural Enterprise: offers more bespoke information services to artists and cultural businesses, particularly through its regional mentors. In particular:
• staff can draw on CE’s database (which is not remotely accessible) to provide a broad range of contacts for writers interested in developing their work in health and social care and with young people, including British umbrella organizations (Lapidus, National Network for the Arts in Health, etc.), Welsh local authority arts development officers, Welsh health trusts, Welsh literary organizations and funders, etc.
• with respect to working opportunities and dedicated training, CE provides primarily a signposting service: writers would be directed to the Academi for more detailed information about opportunities in the areas under consideration.
• CE can, however, provide more in-depth mentoring concerning business development. (This would be appropriate for a number of writers approached, who were setting up as businesses.)
• Information on funding can be searched, free of charge, on CE’s data-base, either by CE staff or the enquirer (but only in Cardiff). Data includes: local authority new business programmes (primarily European funds, so geographically restricted); trusts, searchable on trustfunding.org, to which CE subscribes; and loan schemes, offering advantageous terms.
Tony Bianchi
30 January 2004