Details
Age group: Year 7-9
Available: Monday – Friday
Length: 120 minutes. Please allow more time after your workshop to explore the galleries and public spaces
Group size: minimum 10
Subjects and Key Skills
Creative writing and creative thinking skills
Workshop outline
Explore examples of writing on display in the British Library, try out experimental writing techniques and discuss how using these methods affect our writing.
The workshop aims to:
• introduce participants to new techniques and tools in writing
• increase confidence by using language playfully
• explore the relationships between text and the textual object, text and performance and between image and text
• gain an awareness of the tradition of creative writing
Using a quick ice-breaker and some brief drawing activities, we will begin to discuss how new approaches to function, system, rule and experiment can affect creative outcomes.
Drawing inspiration from the items on display and using prompts and writing exercises, participants will complete several pieces of writing that use experimental techniques. As a group, participants will use performance to examine and discuss what they have written.
Each individual will choose a piece of their writing and use a variety of materials including stencils, ink-stamps and letraset to illustrate it. All the work will be collected, copied and bound together in a booklet for participants to take away.
Pre-visit activities
Read some contemporary, experimental literature and discuss how this differs from more conventional forms you have studied.
Post-visit activities
Ask students to choose an object and use it to inspire a piece of creative writing, using some of the new techniques learnt during the workshop. Visit an exhibition and choose a painting, sculpture, photograph or another object to do the same activity.
Ready to book?
