“Joining was the best thing I could have done for my writing.” Susan Sainsbury.
“New Writing South provides an invaluable service in bringing people together and creating opportunity. Contacts that I’ve made whilst attending their events have led further than I would ever have imagined.” Sean Tyler.
“An invaluable help, friendly service and constant encouragement – the perfect support for every writer.” Dominique De-Light
New Writing South The Writers’ Place, 9 Jew Street Brighton BN1 1UT T 01273 735353 E admin@newwritingsouth.com W www.newwritingsouth.com Follow us!
New Writing South is a company registered by guarantee and a registered charity. Company No. 1092533. Registered Charity No. 4318810.
at Brighton Festival & Fringe 2012
About us New Writing South is passionate about new writing. We’re a membership organisation that embraces a community of creative writers who are a mixture of emerging and professional writers, and those just having fun.
State of Play Arts & Learning Conference 2012
We offer a range of services to writers across all levels, from mentoring, bursaries, development workshops and script reading; to hosting special writer events and networking meetings (Writer Hubs) in partnership with venues in the region. Support for writers include: workshops, feedback, mentoring, networking, bursaries and advice, and we work in innovative ways with professional writers offering promotion and employment. We also work in schools and educational settings. Our highly successful Creative Learning Team has worked with thousands of young people for over eight years, inspiring their imaginations and encouraging their creativity. The team includes: authors, playwrights, poets, radio writers, scriptwriters and more. Visit us to see how you could get involved. www.newwritingsouth.com
Brighton Festival and Fringe We’re delighted to be part of Brighton Festival 2012, guest directed by Vanessa Redgrave. We are partnered with the festival in bringing our annual lecture Uses of Religion for Non-Believers delivered by Alain de Botton, and our theatre debate Dirty Drama. We’re also hosting a range of other literary happenings during May, which are detailed in this booklet. Have a great festival. With thanks to our partners and sponsors:
State of Play promises a day of lively dialogue, activity and insight into the current thinking around arts and learning. It mixes big ideas with policy updates and offers the chance to work with colleagues across arts and education to understand the challenges and explore opportunities. Aimed at those working across arts and learning, this is the first of a yearly event designed to bring people together for fruitful conversations that cross art form and sector to inform new thinking. Big ideas about education come from Bill Lucas, Director of Centre of Real World Learning and the Expansive Education network, while Jane Bryant, CEO of Artswork, the new Arts Council funded Bridge Organisation for the south east and Peter Chivers, Director of Music and Arts Study Support at Brighton & Hove City Council present an overview of new direction for the arts. State of Play is delivered by Culture Shift in partnership with New Writing South. • Tuesday 19 June, 10.30am-4.30pm • The Old Market, 11a Upper Market Street, Brighton & Hove • To book visit www.newwritingsouth.com or call 01273 735353
Join us! Our membership scheme is for everyone involved in creative writing, whether you’re a professional or emerging writer or doing it for fun. We exist for our members and your membership helps us with everything that we do. Membership provides access to a wide range of writer services including: 1:1 advice, script and manuscript assessment, career advice and mentoring. Membership also gives you advance notice of our programme of professional workshops, creative events and writing opportunities. You will also receive your own online writer profile page on a directory of south east writers, free entry to our Writer Hub professional networks, and a fortnightly enewsletter that keeps you up-to-date with news and writing opportunities.
Hire us! The Writers’ Place is a workshop and meeting space located at New Writing South’s offices in the heart of Brighton’s cultural quarter, within walking distance of shops, bars and restaurants as well as main transport links. Holding up to 23 people theatre style, or up to 16 people workshop style, the space is available for hire by individuals, groups and organisations. For more information on becoming a member or hiring The Writers’ Place, visit our website or call us.
Art & Science Flash Story Gym
Learn the liberating process of flash fiction writing and add an invaluable tool to your writers’ toolkit, one that will enable you to boost your own creativity when you’re feeling uninspired, bust writers block, and create fresh voices. Using her experience as a science journalist, and as writer-in-residence at Bristol University’s Science faculty, Tania Hershman will bring a sparklingly special scientific note to the day’s proceedings, which added to the somewhat unusual visual art Vanessa Gebbie has in store for you, will make this a fun-packed workshop with a difference – a unique programme to challenge and inspire! Attend this workshop and you could walk away with a supply of new and original work in time to polish for the Brighton Festival Flash Slam on 19 May! • Saturday 21 April, 10.30am-4.30pm • The Writers’ Place, 9 Jew Street, Brighton • £45 • To book visit www.newwritingsouth.com or call 01273 735353
Dirty Drama
WordJam Fridays Story Surgery
What is it that makes the outcomes of political conflict and military aggression rich material for dramatists? And why is political drama enjoying a remarkable revival?
Four Friday nights of spectacular spoken word entertainment, hosted by top live literature curators from London and Brighton.
Join this lively discussion with a panel of playwrights including: David Greig (Damascus and Macbeth for the RSC) and Stella Feehily (Bang, Bang, Bang for the Royal Court) plus Neil Murray, Executive Producer of the National Theatre of Scotland (Black Watch). Chaired by Jack Bradley, Literary Associate to Sonia Friedman Productions in London’s West End. • Saturday 26 May, 2pm • Brighton Dome, Pavilion Theatre, New Road, Brighton • £8.50 • To book visit www.brightonfestival.org or call 01273 709709
with Susannah Waters
On 4 May, Dean Atta brings his exquisite rhyming and dining experience, Come Rhyme With Me from London to the south coast. Paul Lyalls will host his exciting night of cabaret poetry, Express Excess on 11 May. Hammer and Tongue's Rosy Carrick's Hip-Hop Happening will be tearing down the house on 18 May, and Justin Coe offers his Don't Feed the Poets experience to finish up the series on 25 May. Don’t miss this amazing live-lit series! • Friday evenings, 7-9.30pm • 4/11/18/25 May • The Writers’ Place, 9 Jew Street, Brighton • £8 (£6 cons.) • To book visit www.brightonfringe.org or call 01273 717272 (4 May - three-course rhyming supper ticket with food included: £12/£10 or £8/£6 for standard ticket without food)
You’ve got a great book idea, maybe even a manuscript. In this special hour-long one-to-one session taking place as part of the Fringe, celebrated writer Susannah Waters will work exclusively with you to help get your story in shape. When booking a place via the Brighton Fringe website, you should submit no more than 1500 words in advance of your session no later than 2 May to: rsvp@hendricks.co.uk Susannah Waters first novel, Long Gone Anybody , was published by Black Swan in 2004, and short-listed for the Pendleton May Award. Her second novel, Cold Comfort , was published by Doubleday in 2006, and featured on Radio 4′s Today programme. She is currently working on her third. She is an Associate Tutor in Creative Writing at the University of Sussex, as well as a regular tutor for the Arvon Foundation.
• Wednesday 23 May • 1hr slots every hour from 12pm • Hendrick's Library of Delightfully Peculiar Writings • £35 • To book visit www.brightonfringe.org or call 01273 717272 (vist website for up-to-date booking info)
NWS/Hendrick’s Best New Play Award
New Writing South in partnership with Brighton Festival Fringe and Hendrick’s Gin are looking for this year’s best new original play. Now in its third year, the award is presented to the playwright and is in recognition of an outstanding new play premiered at Brighton Festival Fringe. It is designed to attract more new plays to Brighton and encourage good quality, original pieces to the Fringe. The 2011 award was won by Kefi Chadwick for Mathematics of the Heart (above) produced at the Marlborough Theatre. Kefi's play has subsequently transferred to a London Theatre to huge acclaim. What we’ll be looking for: • Writing that is original and demonstrates a unique theatre voice • A play that embraces risk and is brave in content • Writing that shows flair and accomplishment • An outstanding new play! To find out more about the award and how to enter, visit: www.brightonfringe.org/participants/awards
The Racecourse Project
We join forces with Natural Shocks Theatre Company and Hydrocracker with up to ten amazing writers to make an extraordinary, new site specific response to Brighton Racecourse*. In an immersive new show, The Racecourse Project will be a site-specific work made and performed after-dark at Brighton Racecourse. A promenade performance that takes audiences on a journey from turnstile to winning post via tipster and tote. • 18/19/20 May. Shows at 6.30pm & 8.30pm (*subject to funding - check website) • £10 (£8 cons.) • Brighton Racecourse, Freshfield Road, Brighton • To book visit www.newwritingsouth.com or call 01273 735353
New Writing South Lecture
The In/Visible City
Uses of religion for non-believers
An arts & human rights round table debate
Alain de Botton
We return to Brighton Festival for our annual lecture, this year delivered by popular philosopher and author, Alain de Botton. With militant atheists facing off against religious diehards, contemporary debates about religion alltoo-often become sterile and predictable. In this lecture popular philosopher and writer Alain de Botton (Status Anxiety; The Architecture of Happiness) argues that even for non-believers, religion has much to teach us, particularly regarding rituals, rites of passage, pilgrimages, morality, art and architecture. His is an argument sure to attract notice, because it maintains that atheists can be deeply fascinated by religion and learn much from it, without the need to believe. Once again the philosopher of everyday life challenges our ideas and shows how we might make our society and our own lives more caring and more meaningful. • Saturday 5 May 2012, 3pm • Corn Exchange, Church Road, Brighton • £10 • To book visit www.brightonfestival.org or call 01273 709709
Dah Theatre Company are one of the most important central European theatre companies at work globally with an international reputation and many awards to their credit. Dijana Milosevic artistic director of the Dah Theatre Company and Research Centre in Belgrade, will be in conversation with Prodigal Theatre‘s Alister O’Loughlin to discuss the company’s work, perceptions of nationhood and how cultural exchanges can define the life of an artist. Founded in 1991 Dah Theatre Company’s development of their first piece was interrupted by the commencement of civil war and the fall of the former Yugoslavia. Opposing the war’s destruction with creation, the company sought to make sense of “A world falling apart” and, against the tide of artists leaving their country, they made the decision to stay. This open discussion and debate is a part of the EU Culture In/Visible City programe taking place in Brighton 6-10 May. • Sunday 6 May, 4pm • The Writers’ Place, 9 Jew Street, Brighton • £5 • To book visit www.newwritingsouth.com or call 01273 735353