South Kensington writing circle launches

The Albertopolis Writing Circle is a project seeking out staff, students and alumni of Imperial and the other institutions in South Kensington.

By any standards Imperial is a unique place to work and study – with a mind-boggling diverse array of cutting-edge research, innovative teaching and excellent support services underpinning it all.

Now a new initiative is aiming to capture a glimpse of those work experiences in the form of prose.

The Albertopolis Writing Circle is a project – based mainly in the Centre for Co-Curricular Studies – seeking out staff, students and alumni of the College and the other institutions in South Kensington to tell factual or fictional stories based on their working lives. Nick Russell, Emeritus Reader in Science Communication, who is co-ordinating, explains.

Why do this?

The Circle will have a public engagement function and will also help to foster informal collaborations across the South Kensington institutions. A lot of current public engagement initiatives tend to focus on outcomes – new science, new technology, new art, or new displays – which is of course important. But our feeling is that this is not enough; knowing about the people involved is as important as knowing about what they produce. Who are they? Why they are doing the work? How do they achieve their objectives? A good way to describe these working lives is to tell interesting stories about (actual or fictional) characters and how they go about their business.

How will it work?

We hope to encourage people who may or may not already have literary aspirations to write about their work or study experience. Like most writing circles the core activity will be regular workshops where writers present work-in-progress for peer comment by fellow-authors. Writers help each other to write better. We also want to put them in touch with professional writers looking for fresh ideas and subject matter themselves.

What do you aim to achieve?

We would like to produce material of genuine literary merit with a view to wide publication. We also intend to build networks with creative writing programmes in other colleges and universities. The plan is based on a couple of previous initiatives, notably the engagement initiative in Manchester which led to the recent story collection Litmus.

For more details contact Nick at: nick.russell@imperial.ac.uk