Centre for English Literature and Language

Creative Writing, Performance and Innovation

The Creative Writing, Performance and Innovation cluster was created in 2009. It is headed by Dr Scott Thurston and includes Dr Kate Adams, Dr Ursula Hurley, Dr Gill James, Dr Judy Kendall, Szilvi Naray-Davey, Frances Piper, Professor Antony Rowland and Jennifer Tuckett.

The cluster's key strength is in the practice and study of innovative writing. The research interests in the cluster include: experimental and literary fiction, young adult fiction, innovative poetry, visual text, scriptwriting, devising and directing for stage, performance, adaptation, autobiography and translation.

Members of the cluster have published, performed and won awards for their work nationally and internationally, including appearances across Europe and in the United States. They also participate in the local literary scenes of Salford and Greater Manchester through venues and events such as Writing Lives, The Creative Cafe and The Other Room poetry reading series. The cluster is part of the Playwriting Network which includes the Royal Exchange Theatre, Liverpool Everyman Theatre and Playhouse, West Yorkshire Playhouse, Birmingham Repertory Theatre, Contact Theatre and BBC Writers Room North

Staff from this cluster meet regularly as the Creative Writing Research Seminar, where members give and receive feedback on work in progress. Two events series – Vital Signs and Drama Workshops – are also an important part of the cluster’s activity. There are strong links with the Poetry and Poetics cluster at Salford, since three members are internationally-known scholars of poetry.

Current Projects

Cluster members, led by Ursula Hurley, are involved in 'Writing Lives', a community storytelling project, initially funded by a successful bid to HEFCE's Urban Regeneration: Making a Difference funded project (2007-9) and subsequently sustained by local, national and international partnership working. The project uses creative writing workshops as a form of culture-led regeneration, and explores their role as a means for the expression of identities and as a facilitator of community cohesion and belonging. Recent work on mapping and memory was exhibited at MediaCityUK:

The cluster houses the new MediaCity Masterclasses, a new series of events run in partnership with BBC Writersroom which will bring in leading writers for television drama, sitcom, soap opera, audio drama and children’s television over the course of 2013 – 2014.

Gill James’ Creative Café Project serves the more immediate community, including local cases and overseas including Tenerife.

Scott Thurston co-runs The Other Room – a poetry reading series dedicated to innovative and experimental writing which has been in operation since 2008. The series has presented over a hundred poets, many of them of international standing.

Research Students

Lucy Burnett, Eco-poetics and contemporary poetry (2009-)
Nathan Thompson, Psychogeography and contemporary poetry (2010-)
Mignotte Mekuria Marru, The Role Stories Play in the Crafting of Imagined (Exiled) Communities (2011-)

Awards

Antony Rowland was awarded the 10K Manchester Poetry Prize in 2012, which was established by the current Poet Laureate. He also received a young writer’s award from the Society of Authors in 2000.

Ursula Hurley won first prize in the Unbound Press International Creative Non-fiction Competition (2010) with the first chapter of her experimental memoir, Heartwood. She was also shortlisted for the Tony Lothian Prize – top 6 from an international field – for her work in biography (2010).

Jennifer Tuckett won the Old Vic New Voices Theatre 503 Award (2008) and was a finalist for the Adrienne Benham Award (2009).

Judy Kendall's poem 'Wa Harmony' from her collection Joy Change was selected for the Forward Book of best poems published in 2009/2010. A poem from her previous collection The Drier The Brighter was also selected for the 2007 anthology.

Key Publications

Kate Adams, I Found this Soil Under my Fingernails , Live Art Performance, Emergency Festival, Green Room Arts, Manchester (2009)

Ursula Hurley, '1st Chapter of a Creative Non-Fiction Book: 1st Prize: Heartwood ' in: Loose Leaves Unbound Press Literary Competition Anthology Volume 1, (Unbound Press, 2010), pp.27-34.

Gill James,A Gallery for Nick (Chapeltown, 2012) (novel)

Judy Kendall, Climbing Postcards (Cinnamon Press, 2011)

Frances Piper, (Director), Donal Fleet: A Confessional, Ignition Stage, Hampstead Theatre, London, England and Manchester Festival (2009)

Antony Rowland, I am a Magenta Stick (Salt, 2012)

Scott Thurston, Internal Rhyme (Shearsman, 2010)

Jennifer Tuckett, I am a Superhero (joint winner, Old Vic Theatre 503 Award, 2008, Arts Council Award 2009)

Teaching

Cluster members deliver a variety of specialist modules across the BA (Hons) English and Creative Writing, and BA (Hons) Drama and Creative Writing degree courses, as well as contributing to the MA Creative Writing: Innovation and Experiment and MA Creative Writing: Playwriting.

Events

The cluster is supported by the Vital Signs, Drama Workshop and the BBC Writersroom MediaCity Masterclass series, which invite visiting writers to the university. For further information please contact Jennifer Tuckett

Future Publications, Projects and Works in Progress

Jennifer Tuckett has recently been awarded £40,000 Arts Council England funding to run The Alligator Club, a year-long investigation of new writing in the North West to be run in partnership with the Arts Organisation Liverpool, Liverpool Everyman and Playhouse, The Dukes Lancaster, Octagon Theatre Bolton, Royal Exchange Theatre and Theatre by the Lake .

Kate Adams is currently leading a collaborative practice based research project into performance and transformation and is co-directing a theatre performance in Athens in spring 2013. Her research is focused primarily on experiential and participatory political theatre and within this area she has explored shifting experiences of time in both solo and collaborative work.

Frances Piper is currently working on the Digital Shakespeare project exploring the use of Smart Phone/Web App technology within the performance and teaching of Shakespeare's plays. She is also collaborating with Szilvi Naray-Davey on the staging of newly translated Hungarian play (Sunday Lunch, trans Naray-Davey) to be performed in Budapest, Hungary in 2013.