The Writing Squad

STEP CHANGE Applying to the Arts Council’s DYCP Funding Programme
2021-01-21 19:30 - 21:00 UTC
Developing Your Creative Practice (DYCP) is Arts Council England’s funding scheme that aims to provide financial support to individual artists in order to facilitate a step change in their career. In this workshop successful DYCP applicant, Stevie will help you to think strategically about your career as an artist and help you to consider how DYCP funding could best support you in achieving your aims. DYCP is a very competitive funding programme and while it is important to note that attending this workshop will not necessarily guarantee you success in the application process, the aim will be to increase your chances of writing a strong application with support from Stevie and the other workshop participants.
This workshop will take place over two sessions. To maximise the benefits of the support on offer you will need to spend time thinking about and working on your application in-between the two sessions. More details on the eventbrite link.
*if you are in Squad 10 and would like a place if there are any, please email billie@writingsquad.com

THE SPACE
2021-01-20 19:30 - 21:00, 2021-01-06 19:30 - 21:00
The Space, a dedicated (virtual) space for us to write alone, together.
Think of it as your favourite library, a coffee shop, or a co-working space. It’s a room full of writers at work, and it’s a way of making a commitment to yourself to show up and write. Pop in to The Space to work on any writing project that you like – and in case you need inspiration, an optional writing prompt will be emailed in advance, for you to use, adapt or ignore.
Come and go as your please, and feel free to make yourself a cuppa. We’ll work in silence (don’t forget to mute yourself!), but halfway through there’ll be the option of joining small-group break-out rooms for 5 minutes, for a quick chat (but if you’re on a roll and don’t want to stop working, just drop Francesca a line in the ‘chat’ box and you can remain in the main room.)
We will send you a Zoom link before the day.

POETS MINIGOALS
2021-01-20 17:30 - 19:00, 2021-01-13 17:30 - 19:00, 2021-01-06 17:30 - 19:00, 2020-12-16 17:30 - 19:00
This Zoom meeting will last maybe about an hour and not longer than an hour and half.
We are seeing how we have done with the mini-goals we set ourselves last week, and maybe renewing them or setting new ones.
This is open to Squad 1-9 with a focus on poets, there are other groups for script and prose writers. If you haven’t been to a previous meeting, you are welcome to join, just let steve@writingsquad.com know you want to come.
You will be sent a link before the meeting and you can go on Zoom from your computer or phone.

PROSE WRITERS MINIGOALS
2021-01-19 17:30 - 19:00, 2021-01-12 17:30 - 19:00, 2021-01-05 17:30 - 19:00, 2020-12-22 17:30 - 19:00, 2020-12-15 17:30 - 19:00
This Zoom meeting will last maybe about an hour and not longer than an hour and half.
We are seeing how we have done with the mini-goals we set ourselves last week, and maybe renewing them or setting new ones.
This is open to Squad 1-9 with a focus on prose writers, there are other groups for poets and scriptwriters. If you haven’t been to a previous meeting, you are welcome to join, just let steve@writingsquad.com know you want to come.
You will be sent a link before the meeting and you can go on Zoom from your computer or phone.

SCRIPTWRITERS MINIGOALS
2021-01-18 17:30 - 19:00, 2021-01-04 17:30 - 19:00, 2020-12-21 17:30 - 19:00
This Zoom meeting will last maybe about an hour and not longer than an hour and half.
We are seeing how we have done with the mini-goals we set ourselves last week, and maybe renewing them or setting new ones.
This is open to Squad 1-9 with a focus on scriptwriters, there are other groups for poets and prose writers. If you haven’t been to a previous meeting, you are welcome to join, just let steve@writingsquad.com know you want to come.
You will be sent a link before the meeting and you can go on Zoom from your computer or phone.

SQUAD 10: WORKSHOP WITH FRANCESCA (MANCHESTER)
2021-01-16 11:00 - 17:00 | Manchester, Manchester
INDIVIDUAL WORKSHOPS – SQUAD DAYS

We will slide from Zoom into this programme when it is possible.
If on Zoom they will stay at two hours starting at 14.00, if we are able to meet up face to face they will take place in the cities mentioned from 11.00-17.00. All Saturdays.
Put the dates on the next page in your diary. We will email you about these workshops nearer the time with a link to sign up for them on Eventbrite.

THE AWESOME PLAY TEXT / SCREENPLAY READING CLUB
2021-01-12 19:15 - 20:45
During this meet up we will be discussing The Funeral Director by Iman Qureshi. We will send you a script or you can buy it from Nick Hern Books.
Life as the director of a Muslim funeral parlour isn’t always easy, but Ayesha has things pretty sorted. She and Zeyd share everything: a marriage, a business, a future.
Until Tom walks in to organise his boyfriend’s funeral. A snap moral decision, informed by the values of Ayesha’s community and faith, has profound consequences.
Forced to confront a secret she has hidden even from herself, Ayesha must decide who she is – no matter the cost.
An incisive and heartfelt story of sexuality, gender and religion in twenty-first-century Britain. It won the 2018 Papatango New Writing Prize and premiered at Southwark Playhouse, London, in October 2018.
What to expect at Awesome P&SPR Club?
The zoom is informal and relaxed. No one is put on the spot. We tend to look at the text from 3 positions:
How did it make you feel / think as a reader?
What kind of themes/ideas is it exploring (so a kind of Eng Lit pov)?
What kind of ideas/tools does it give to you as a writer?
That’s it. If that sounds like your kind of thing, then Matt and Emma will be delighted to see you on the night.

Our Space
2020-12-21 12:15 - 14:00, 2020-12-16 19:30 - 21:00, 2020-12-14 12:15 - 14:00, 2020-12-07 12:15 - 14:00, 2020-12-02 19:30 - 21:00, 2020-11-30 12:15 - 14:00
HOSTED BY SQUAD GRAD HANNAH HODGSON – OUR SPACE
A dedicated (virtual) space for us to write alone, together.
Think of it as your favourite library, a coffee shop, or a co-working space. It’s a room full of writers at work, and it’s a way of making a commitment to yourself to show up and write. Pop in to The Space to work on any writing project that you like – and in case you need inspiration, an optional writing prompt will be emailed in advance, for you to use, adapt or ignore.
Come and go as your please, and feel free to make yourself a cuppa.
The Zoom link will be posted to the Squad Facebook group just before kickoff.

POETRY AND EVERYDAY SEXISM with Kim Moore
2020-12-17 19:30 - 21:00
Kim recently completed her doctorate at Manchester Metropolitan University, exploring how to use lyric poetry to write about everyday sexism and female desire.
This event is a chance to hear her thesis as a reader-directed text, inspired by the ‘choose your own adventure books’ by Ian Livingstone that she read throughout her childhood. It contains sections of prose and small groups of poems. At the end of each of these, the reader is presented with a choices of what they would like to read next.
Zoom is the ideal setting for this experimental reading, where you, the audience, will decide what you would like to hear next using polls.
The choices you will be presented with will sometimes ask you to pick the phrase you’re most attracted to. Sometimes they will ask you to reflect on your reaction to what you’ve just heard and then make your choice.
TW: Some of the material in this event will discuss sexual violence and trauma.
Kim’s first collection The Art of Falling (Seren, 2015) won the 2016 Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize. She won a Northern Writers Award in 2014, an Eric Gregory Award in 2011 and the Geoffrey Dearmer Prize in 2010. Her pamphlet If We Could Speak Like Wolves was a winner in the 2012 Poetry Business Pamphlet Competition, and went on to be shortlisted for a Michael Marks Award. She recently completed a doctorate in poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University , just won the Ledbury Poetry Competition and her second full-length collection All the Men I Never Married will be published in 2021.
Sign up here

ALEX PRAGER STORIES led by Steve Dearden
2020-12-12 14:00 - 16:00
FOR SQUAD 10
We will each write our own stories gently guided by a mixture of Alex Prager’s wonderful photographs and other prompts, some for everyone, some just for you.
An hour plus to write alone together, with new prompts dropped in regularly throughout and some time for sharing at the end, but only if you want to.
When not running the Squad Steve write’s short stories, has been Writer In Residence at Bluewater Shopping Centre and the Wakefield Literature Festival. www.stevedearden.com

AN INTRODUCTION TO DIGITAL REWILDING with Katie Byford
2020-12-10 19:30 - 21:00
Open to grads of Squads 1-9, if you are Squad 10 and want a place should one become available then email steve@writingsquad.com
There are two workshops, one on 26th November the second at the same time, 19.30 on the 10th December, please don’t sign up unless you can make both.
This is an experimental workshop delivered as part of the development of a larger funding bid to carry on this work.
You will create works of text, image and/or audio to explore ways in which they can transform places important to you, with the aim to reclaim them through imagination.
There are two sessions.
In the first Katie will introduce the project and we will explore how creating a piece of text, audio or image can ‘rewild’ a place. We will talk about notions of nature, wilderness/wildness & ‘rewilding’; ecology; and creativity as a tool of empowerment at a granular local level
Then you will have two weeks to go away, think about the brief and make some work.
The second session will be a discussion and a sharing of both the process of making and the work made.
We hope that if the funding bid is successful, work produced in this workshop will inform and maybe feature on what will become the Digital Rewilding Project’s website, with work throughout the UK accessible through an interactive map.
Katie is a poet, filmmaker and arts facilitator, and a former Writing Squad member. She has performed poetry across the UK, including at the Houses of Parliament and in tandem with a live orchestra at Durham Castle. Her poetry has been published in Magma, Popshot and anthologies by Bloodaxe (Hallelujah for 50ft Women) and Macmillan (She is Fierce: Brave, Bold & Beautiful Poems by Women). Katie is a Barbican Young Poet alum, and her work with the Barbican has included workshops and commissions, most recently for major exhibitions AI: More than Human and Lee Krasner: Living Colour. In 2015 Katie founded Thorn, a grassroots arts collective based in Durham which continues to provide space for young people across all art forms.

THE SPACE
2020-12-09 19:30 - 21:00
OPEN TO ALL SQUADS
The Space, a dedicated (virtual) space for us to write alone, together.
Think of it as your favourite library, a coffee shop, or a co-working space. It’s a room full of writers at work, and it’s a way of making a commitment to yourself to show up and write. Pop in to The Space to work on any writing project that you like – and in case you need inspiration, an optional writing prompt will be emailed in advance, for you to use, adapt or ignore.
Come and go as your please, and feel free to make yourself a cuppa. We’ll work in silence (don’t forget to mute yourself!), but halfway through there’ll be the option of joining small-group break-out rooms for 5 minutes, for a quick chat (but if you’re on a roll and don’t want to stop working, just drop Francesca a line in the ‘chat’ box and you can remain in the main room.)
We will send you a Zoom link before the day.

MAPPING MEMORIES with Malika
2020-12-05 14:00 - 16:00
This is a Squad 10 workshop
We will draw on our lives and excavate the memories dormant in our bodies, mine several ideas then sketch them out and explore how to craft these ideas into poems.
You’ll leave with several ideas and sketches to work on further, as well as the recipe for crafting these, and any mining you may do in future, into poems.
A practical workshop with lots of writing and writing tools for life.

ON THE TIP OF MY TONGUE + Jenny Danes
2020-12-03 19:30 - 21:00
Open to grads of Squads 1-9, if you are Squad 10 and want a place should one become available the mail steve@writingsquad.com
An exploration of the gap between what we think we sound like when speaking to ourselves and how we sound to other people, between being introvert and extrovert, between a whisper and a scream.
We will discuss how the way we have been brought up to speak, the self-imposed conventions, how we think we sound, how being conscious of our own voice, affects the way we write.
We will read poems by Warsan Shire, Helen Mort and Vievee Francis and use them to write our own. We will share work too, though only if you want to.
Jenny was highly commended in the Bridport Prize in 2013 and again in 2016. In 2016 she won the inaugural New Poets Prize, and went on to publish her debut pamphlet Gaps with smith|doorstop in July 2017. Jenny’s poems have appeared in a range of magazines including The Rialto, Magma, The North, Brittle Star and The Kindling. She’s read at Ledbury Poetry Festival, Bridlington Poetry Festival, Waterstones Sheffield, The Poetry Library and The Poetry Café. She has recently completed her MA at UEA where her dissertation collection Guarded By Teeth explored concepts of voice, sonic shame, introversion and the mechanics of speech.

A SMORGASBORD OF WRITING PROMPTS with Emma
2020-11-28 14:00 - 16:00
This is a Squad 10 workshop
It’s for the writers who don’t know quite how to start, for those who want to grab a page and scribble out unformed thoughts and possibilities. It’s for the writers who want to start finding out what their next idea might be, even though they haven’t met it yet.
Dearhearts, do you know what I think? I think it’s time to have some fun. You will not learn to edit, polish or refine your words during this particular workshop.
You will be invited to let go and spill out whatever crappy-awesome-imperfect-amazing-shit-and-pearls vomit that decides it’s time to arrive.
Who knows what will emerge? And who knows what you might do with what comes?
If that sounds like the kind of thing you need right now, then might I interest you in the
The Menu
We’ll have 2 hours together.
I’ll present you with a menu of prompts.
You’ll work like dogs.
You’ll try things out.
Get cramp in your hand from scribbling.
Play, float ideas, make a stink, find some treasure.
At the end, you’ll have a chance to reflect and share if you want.
But there will be zero pressure to do so.
And then you’ll float off, into the winter evening, tired, but with new ideas or possibilities.
What to bring
You.
Pens and paper.
A computer if you must.
Paint and glitter &/or other awesome shit, if you want to.
A decision to be brave and playful.
A decision to inhabit that wonderful, liberating creative headspace, where you dare to care deeply but still hold it all lightly.
A vow to try everything, even if you think it’s a terrible, terrible, terrible idea.
An interesting object.
Some words or an image or both from a book/film/tv/videogame/play/poem/documentary/radio-play/from real-life that you overheard /from an imaginary conversation/from something you stole and will pretend you thought of yourself/from something you think might have happened but you can’t remember/from something your mum/dad/brother/sister/twin/cousin/gran/friend/nemesis/neighbour/boss/imaginary friend once said / a stupid thing / a clever thing /about whatever from wherever/ as long as you think these words &/or image are cool/interesting/noteworthy/or in some way, not boring/ at least to you. AND you’d like to gift them to the group.
Oh and you should bring a bucketful of love for yourself and your creativity and a fuck ton of determination to support everyone else you might find yourself zooming with.
Those things are the knowables.
The rest is to be discovered.
