New Writing North

E: mail@newwritingnorth.com
W: www.newwritingnorth.com

Director: Claire Malcolm

New Writing North is the writing development agency for the north east of England. They are a unique organisation within the UK, merging individual development work with writers across all media with educational work and the production of creative projects.

They work with writers from different genres and forms to develop career opportunities, new commissions, projects, residencies, publications and live events.

They work in partnership with a broad range of organisations, universities, local authorities, regional development agencies, sponsors and media producers to develop opportunities for writers in the region. Recent projects in this area include The Hawthorn Public Poetry project with One North East, the development of proposals for a Northern Writers’ Centre with Newcastle University, the Yorkshire TV Writer’s Bursary Scheme and a large-scale community project, Writing Westpark, sponsored by property developers Bussey and Armstrong.

They manage the Northern Writers' Awards and the Northern Rock Foundation Writer’s Award (currently the largest literary award in the UK and worth £60,000 to the winning writer) and support writers at all stages of their careers by career mentoring and by the creation of professional development training initiatives.

Their live literature programme Magnetic North runs throughout the year and commissions new work from writers.

They work in partnership with theatres in the region to develop new writing for the stage. The training that they offer for writers is promoted as a series of events entitled The Working Writer.

Their international programme, Lingua Franca, aspires to create partnerships and projects for writers from the region with international counterparts. They are currently developing projects in Bulgaria and Siberia and plan to produce an International Festival of Stories in 2004.

They train writers to work with young people and their writers in schools programme works with individual schools, Education Action Zones and Creative Partnership Programmes to undertake innovative work with young people.

They are working with Orange to develop activities for young writers aged 13-25 to help develop the next generation of creative writers in the region.

The website www.newwritingnorth.com has free downloadable guides to writing written by well-known writers, information about what they do and offers funding advice for writers.