PENt Up

Our Clore Poetry and Literature Award project kicks off on Saturday 11th February with our Teachers and Emerging writer’s CPD weekend

PENt Up is a seven week Professional Development training course for teachers and support staff from George Green School and Emerging Artists from the Isle Of Dogs.

It will run alongside an out of hours creative writing course for students from the school during February and March 2012

PENt Up offers the opportunity to have professional writers mentor their personal writing, and where applicable will give a public platform to read or have work read by others. Our hope is that in encouraging, disciplining and critically evaluating the work, it will increase confidence and creativity – and this in turn can be used to encourage and enable pupils to find their own creative and expressive voice.

PENt Up begins with a Writers Weekend hosted in Greenwich (Sat 11 & 12th February 2012 11am-5pm). Personal writing, styles, genres, and sources of inspiration will be explored in a safe and supportive environment of professionals and peers. Written assignments will be agreed with participants to be completed over the future weeks. This weekend will be led by Richard Hurford; playwright, dramaturg and journalist – alongside writers and facilitators from Emergency Exit Arts.

We realise that many young people feel disenfranchised from their community and from literature as a medium, and seek to find ways to address both of these factors through a creative process. The PENt Up students will use improvisation techniques to explore life writing, both poetry and prose, to develop written work from their own life experience, explore ideas of leadership and understand the power of literature to change lives.

The programme will be flexible and youth led so young people can take ownership of the content, processes and outcomes. It will be documented through a blog and evaluation will be youth led using digital cameras to capture direct feedback and document the process alongside pre and post project questionnaires.

Project objectives:

• To engage young people in a wide range of literature including: poetry; memoir; fiction; journalism; letter and speech writing.
• To challenge young people to use their imagination and their life experiences to create positive narratives and inspire others.
• To gain technical understanding of different forms of literature and develop key literary skills.
• To explore the use of creative journals as a tool for creative and personal development.
• To create a body of work, poetry and prose to be presented at two community events.
• To challenge contemporary conventions of “life writing” including celebrity ghost writing and social media.
• To provide CPD for teachers: increasing their creative writing skills to inspire pupils to actively engage with the process of reading and writing.
• To take learning out of the classroom and make connections with the community.

PENt Up offers the opportunity to develop writing.

PENt Up offers you the chance to inspire others.

PENt Up culminates in a Writers’ Salon at Cubbit Town Library and a Performance Cabaret at the Calder’s Wharf Centre on Island Gardens on 27th and 28th March 2012.

This will offer participants the opportunity to read from their own work or have others read for them. These will be joint events with students, teachers and emerging writers coming together to present their work to the local community and to support each others work.

Dates: The student Creative writing course will run for six consecutive weeks every Tues from 21st Feb to 27th March, 4-6pm at Calder’s Wharf Centre, and on Saturday 3rd and 24th March.

Background: Emergency Exit Arts (EEA) specialise in Outdoor Arts - creating multidisciplinary, site responsive productions engaging whole communities. PENt UP is a new project devised by the company which will combine these processes and for the first time apply them to the active interpretation of a range of literary texts and creation of new literary work. It is a project which puts equal emphasis on Professional Development and Youth Engagement.

EEA are part of Platform 11+ an EU funded programme connecting artists from across UK and Europe to share youth arts practices. Resources from Platform 11+ will support professional development and dissemination of good practice, whilst funding from the Clore Duffield Foundation will support the youth arts activities.