As part of our on-going collaboration with Bath Spa University we were invited to programme the third day of the MIX: Text on Screens 2013 conference which took place at their beautiful Corsham Court site.
The MIX conferences are dedicated to talking about text on screen in its many forms – fiction, non-fiction and poetry; mobile, locative and site specific work; video, games, and hybrid forms.
We decided to bring a hands-on dimension to the 2013 conference by programming a Making Day for Writers. Making Day was built around three core themes: ‘creative process’, ‘collaboration’ and ‘writing for different platforms and audiences’; and was designed to provide the writers and artists attending with an opportunity to experiment and try something new in a supported environment.
We programmed seven workshops which were led by respected practitioners whose own work blends storytelling, collaboration and digital technologies.
Making Day opened with a keynote from novelist and games designer Naomi Alderman, who led an exercise in creating a massively multi-authored story with the whole audience.
Attendees then chose from one of the following workshops:
- Making Things Fast: How to Stay Motivated and Creative with Leila Johnston
- Transmedia Activism with Donna Hancox
- Telling Stories to Our Computers with Paul Rissen
- The Object of the Story with Lucy and Barney Heywood of Stand + Stare Collective
- Improv Writing with David Varela
- Exploring Branching Narrative Using Inklewriter with Jon Ingold of Inkle
- Ekphrastic E-poetry exercises with Sarah Tremlett
Workshops ran for four hours and we closed the day with a rapid-fire feedback session from the workshop groups who shared their experience and showcased some of the work they had made.
If you are interested in us programming a Making Day for your organisation, contact us here.