More than 1,000 writers take part in Curtis Brown's £35 Writing Bootcamp

Curtis Brown Creative has recently launched an online writing course, priced at £35, to help aspiring writers during the cost of living crisis.

Anna Davis, the founder and director of the Curtis Brown Creative (CBC) writing school, devised the Writing Bootcamp following feedback from people struggling to afford the more expensive courses. 

She told The Bookseller: “We increasingly heard from people in our writing community last autumn that they would like to take courses with us but couldn’t afford to do so, particularly as a result of the cost of living crisis.

“Although we offer free mentoring opportunities and scholarship places on our bigger courses for those with low income via our Breakthrough Writers’ Programme, we felt we should create a course at an altogether lower price point – a course with teaching videos, tasks, prompts and work-sharing opportunities that would get participants writing and learning every day for 30 days, and would mean that people could have a go at creative writing for the first time, or could revive and refresh their existing writing projects or learn new writing techniques and put them to practice without having to make a huge time commitment or pay out a large fee that they really couldn’t afford. We can just about make it work for the £35 fee, and believe the bootcamp offers great value for money.”

Davis wrote the teaching materials and writing tasks and filmed the teaching videos just before Christmas 2022, launching it as the 30-Day Writing Bootcamp in January 2023.The first time the bootcamp ran, over 400 writers took part, and it has run a further four times with over 1,200 writers take part so far.

Davis said: “It’ll run again in September, and we’re now planning ‘Bootcamp Volume 2’ for the new year, in response to the many people who’ve said they want more. Lots of the writers who’ve taken part in the bootcamp have gone on to apply for or enrol on other courses that we run – but actually not everyone writing really wants to do big courses.”

The writing school has also developed a new educational platform to boost its international reach which has “greatly enhanced functionality”. Davis said: “I think any writing school that is serious about running online courses needs to have a purpose-built platform on which they can operate securely.

"Our students can log in at any time that suits them to study on their courses – watching teaching videos, reading notes and resources, sharing work privately with their small student group – and with their tutors.

"Flexible scheduling means writing workshops and discussions can take place across several days, with our tutors checking in and offering comment and feedback at various different points along the way. We have students in places as far flung as Australia, the US, Singapore, continental Europe, Ireland and the UK all taking part on the same course and studying together.”

The Bookseller reported on the boom of writing courses in 2021.

For more information on the 30-Day Writing Bootcamp, visit the CBC website.