An exploration and writing workshop around London
19 October – 14 December, 2013
An exciting and practical writing workshop exploring ways of engaging with the city through writing. Whether it’s for you or your characters, we’ll create stories in art galleries and the spaces around them, write while walking and eating, and use the city landscape as a rich resource for personal and fictional stories. The workshop will teach you how to map a character’s journey (and your own) through the city; look closely at ways in which the environment impacts on psychology; and explore the shapes and symbolic resonances of the urban landscape. London will be our laboratory, so whether you’re writing fiction, science-fiction or memoir, the exercises are devised to suit all genres and cities!
All participants will be included in a final anthology, and be invited to contribute to the project’s blog.
You’ll also get to explore the works of other writers who’ve used the city as the setting and inspiration for their fiction, and be guided by psychogeography’s principles to roam the city in the name of discovery and transformation, and to deepen your understanding of your own place in London’s landscape.
There’ll be writing suggestions and exercises between each session. All participants will be included in Writers in the Crowd, an anthology of writing in the city.
limited to 8 participants
The workshop will be led by Shaun Levin
Places we’ll visit this term
- Day 1: Introductions, Approaches to Writing the City (19 Oct)
- Day 2: Mira Schendel at Tate Modern. The River and the Skyline (2 Nov)
- Day 3: Sarah Lucas at Whitechapel Gallery. Brick Lane and Bric-a-Brac (16 Nov)
- Day 4: The Wallace Collection. Christmas Shopping as Inspiration (30 Nov)
- Day 5: Putting it All Together: Shaping the Work (14 Dec)
Tutor: Shaun Levin is the creator of Writing Maps, and is the author of the books Seven Sweet Things, A Year of Two Summers, and Snapshots of the Boy,amongst others. His most recent work is a fictional biography of the London-born painter, Mark Gertler. He has taught writing for twenty years, and run workshops in cafes, art galleries, bookshops, parks, a cemetery, and a zoo. Shaun is passionate about exploring the landscape, the sea, the urban environment, as well as other art forms to enrich our stories and take writing to new and unexpected places. He has lived in London for the past fifteen years and has made the city an integral and important part of his work.
Dates and Times: Saturdays, 2-5pm (fortnightly) (19 Oct, 2 Nov, 16 Nov, 30 Nov, 14 Dec)
Venue: Various
Fee: £210 (£190, early-bird rate before 15 August)
Click to book
price includes entrance fees and afternoon tea at The Wallace Collection
