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Arts Council England funding enables Writing Squad to expand core team
New funding from Arts Council England (ACE) has enabled the Writing Squad development programme to expand its core team of specialists with alumni of its own programme.
Six writers will be employed part time to complement the current core team of playwright Emma Adams, novelist Katie Hale, poet Malika Booker and poet/maker Stevie Ronnie.
Writers Georgia Affonso, Helen Bowell and Kym Deyn will contribute to the Squad’s mentoring and workshop programmes. Administrator Jess Wood, who is also a writer, will work with the Squad’s director and co-ordinator on the running and delivery of the organisation. The writers and Wood will work for 40 days each over the next 18 months.
Director Steve Dearden commented: “CORE2 is a brilliant opportunity to increase our capacity and give longer term experience in writer development to emerging writers. It makes real our post-Covid-19 ethos of being an organisation which is as much about sharing the knowledge within our community of writers as it is about top-down training.”
The Writing Squad’s free two-year programme of workshops and one-to-one support is aimed at writers aged 16-22 who live, work or study in the North of England. After they graduate from the programme, writers continue to receive support as they begin their careers. Alumni include playwright Chris Bush, author Saba Sams and multiple winners of The Poetry Business New Poets and Gregory Awards.
In addition to the CORE2 team, artists and writers Jamal Gerald and Lydia Hounat will form COREx, a co-curated strand to encourage experimental work and support Squad writers in their cross genre and interdisciplinary practice for 20 days each.
Sophie O’Neill, managing director of Inpress Books and writing squad chair, said: “We have wanted to establish CORE2 for some time so it is brilliant that our uplift from Arts Council England made this possible. And it is typical of the Squad that pursuing one idea, CORE2, led to another exciting new initiative in COREx.”
