Do you want to improve an aspect of your writing? write a new short story in one day? explore a particular technique? Do you want to bring an experienced author and teacher in to your work place or institution, to create a unique writing experience for staff or visitors?
I’d love to help you achieve your writing aims, just as I have done for many writers and institutions in the past.
I have devised and successfully delivered writing workshops of various kinds for groups and individuals, for students, and for a wide range of participants, in venues from the Science Museum to Bristol Records Office, from arts centres to public libraries, in the UK and Australia.
From 2008 to 2020 I was a visiting lecturer in Creative Writing at Brunel University London. I was visiting speaker for ‘Fiction at the Hurst’ at the John Osborne Arvon Centre in 2019. In 2018 I gave a masterclass to young people for Nottingham UNESCO City of Literature.
NEW: I now offer a bespoke one-to-one writing workshop for an individual writer, tailored to your own writing development needs. This two-day workshop was commissioned for a client’s ‘in-work’ professional development scheme, and successfully trialed as an online workshop during the Covid-19 Lockdown. Ask me about a one-to-one workshop…
I can design you a workshop that leads to a finished product, and/or one that focuses on the creative process, or a particular research context, archive or exhibition.
My writing workshops lead participants through carefully tailored practical creative writing exercises, with moments of reflection, group-sharing, free writing time, and the giving and receiving of feedback. Workshops might also include next steps, such as editorial for publication, and presenting work to a live audience.
Whether you want me to come and work with an existing writing group, or to work with you to devise an open call project for new participants; ask me about a group workshop…
Group workshops have included short story workshops on climate change for the Science Museum that led to participants having their stories published.
As part of A Place Free Of Judgement – my recent libraries live-streaming collaboration with Blast Theory – we devised a series of writing, sound, camera and live performance workshops for fifty young people in public libraries across the West Midlands. Read more about this in my essay for the British Council publication Where Strangers Meet…
During my Leverhulme residency at the UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies I devised cut-up workshops, and a Pecha Kucha session where academic staff could talk about the creative writing that they did alongside academic work.
My short story workshops have been delivered to festival audiences, to arts and creative writing students, and to the general public.
I’ve given workshops in public libraries, and in archives and collections including Bristol Records Office, and with the Burnett Archive of Working Class Autobiography in the Special Collection at Brunel University Library.
A note about access and participation
It is important to me that my workshops are accessible to as wide a range of participants as possible, including working class writers and writers from other underrepresented groups. Writing talent is not connected to personal wealth, and creative opportunities should not be limited to those who can pay expensive fees. That is why, when I work with an organisation or a venue to host public writing workshops, I always seek for the organisation to underwrite necessary costs so that the workshops can be free to participants.
‘Grow your own writing workshop’
Drawing on my years of experiences in this field, I can also teach and/or mentor emerging writers and creative writing students how to plan, deliver and evaluate a writing workshop of their own.
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Tony White would like to acknowledge the support of Arts Council England through the Arts Council Emergency Response Fund: for individuals.
Buy Tony White’s latest novel The Fountain in the Forest via publisher Faber and Faber
Piece of Paper Press 