TheFED Writing Festival 2013

Saturday 16th November

Faraday House

(48-51 Old Gloucester Street, Holborn, London, WC1N 3AE)

 

Were you there?

Please send your photos, recordings, writing, suggestions etc.

to fedonline1@gmail.com

or post them to:

25 Cumberland Road Sidley
Bexhill-on-Sea
East Sussex
TN39 5BU

Please send us the writing you did in the workshops
and it will be displayed on the website 

and please take out the time to complete the

Festival Evaluation Form

This will help us to make next year's event even better.

The Workshops

 

Art Inspired Writing - Paul Evans

Hi in stevenage at the wellbeing centre. We have used Art as inspiration to do poetry, prose, story writing to an appreciative audience. I would like to try the same at this years Fedfest.

We have a collection of Drawings and paintings to a decent standard that have inspired people who use the centre to get more involved in both Art and writing. The result has been positive. I will be bringing work with me to inspire and influence the participants in this workshop.

Hopefully some of the work can be shown and read at the celebratory readings

 

Writing about where I live (community project) - Roger Drury

This is a diary project begun 20 years ago, asking local people of all ages to write about themselves and where they live.

The workshop will share contributions and welcome discussions about how we engage and explore new ways of publishing.

 

The Rules: Ekphrasis and Creative Writing - Brian Docherty

This Workshop makes use of an Exercise devised by Sean O'Brien to generate poems or short prose. This powerful & versatile kickstart shows you how to combine the starting point with found material, photos, postcards, and a choice of first or last lines to surprise yourself. I will also show how you can use The Rules to write a sequence of poems or short fictions. By the end of this session you should have written something you would not otherwise have written, and also be thinking about new possibilities for your work.
 

Writing a Picture Book - Derek Smith

In this workshop we will look at how picture books work, read a few, and in groups make one up. Finally, members will write the text for a picture book individually.

 

Archiving TheFED Histories - Jessica Pauszek, Lucy Parker & Louise Glasscoe

In this interactive workshop/discussion group, we hope to do some writing and have a dialogue about how the FED can be archived and how its many histories can be preserved and represented. Each participant can record their own version of the FED’s history—either through writing or a short oral history, and then we can discuss key moments which have created the network. Some questions to guide our discussion may be: As you see it, what are the key moments or groups that are important to the FED?

How might these moments and writings be presented in a digital archive? How (or should) other groups devoted to community writing and publishing--not FED based but perhaps related--be represented? The goal of this workshop is to both reflect on our own histories (and reasons for being at the festival) as well as what community writing or publishing means to us as individuals and part of a group coming together for this festival.

 

Poetry Boot-Camp - Andrew Henry Smith

Using various brief exercises designed to increase the flow of poetry to the extremities we will build our momentum to produce not only a sweaty brow in the final hour but also an attempt to produce a 'world changing' piece of writing. Ambitious you say! YES thats for sure, but why reach for the ceiling when you can reach for the stars.

This workshop is designed for both newcomers looking to 'take off' as well as old hands perhaps a little jaded and ragged round the edges stuck in a rut writing vague and tired stuff or anyone suffering from the dreaded 'white paper madness (formally known as writers block.) No matter where you are - everyone can benefit from this 'back to basics' approach. We will aim for fun and magic - bring your gym kit, a towel, stopwatch, sharp pencil & a full cup of strong coffee. [ps. Not all these things are really needed ]

 

Stimulating the 5 senses to create a more lush language of communication - Louise Glasscoe

We will be using real stimuli: food (yes, real food); scents (yes, real scents); images; sounds; textures, all essential ingredients in any form of creative writing, to enable the writer to create a more lush language of communication.

Participants will be asked to partake of food (no pressure) preferably with their eyes closed; inhale scents, with their eyes closed and ears blocked; feel textures with their eyes closed; study images with their ears blocked; listen to sounds, not necessarily music, also with their eyes closed. We may also try stimulating 2 senses at the same time, eg eating whilst listening to a sound. Hopefully, in some cases, these stimuli will trigger memories. If not thoroughly stimulated by the end of the workshop, I'll write the participants an IOU.

 

The Light Within The Journey Without - Roy & Lucia Birch

Self Healing through Writing and Meditation.

 

The ‘Journeys’ Performance Poetry Workshop - Agnes Meadows

This workshop encourages poets to write and perform their work whatever their level/experience. Journeys can take us towards our dreams or away from our nightmares, take us to impossible horizons in far distant places, or consolidate the comfortable and familiar.

Here we’ll look at the myriad places and experiences journeys can mean, and the different elements comprising any kind of voyage. Whether you’re experienced or new at the writing game, you’ll be able to produce new work, ready for sharing and performance.