Curating and commissioning new work
Supporting talent and skills development
Engaging associate artists
Supporting creative diversity
Promoting the import and export of new writing
Stimulating debate and new thinking
“Both domestically and internationally, an irreplaceable resource for writers and readers.”
Sarah Perry, author of The Essex Serpent
Image from Kumkum Malhotra: A Live Story, co-commissioned and co-produced by National Centre for Writing and Norfolk & Norwich Festival in collaboration with Story Machine Productions. Based on the story by Preti Taneja. © Thom Law Photography
Opportunities for young people and schools
Writing workshops for all at Dragon Hall
Creative writing online courses
Writing and translation mentoring, particularly for those who have experienced barriers
“We’ve enjoyed wonderful storytelling sessions in Dragon Hall. To have the National Centre for Writing on our doorstep is so inspiring.”
Vicky Lubbock, teacher at Angel Road Junior School
Image from the Children’s City of Literature Anthology launch. © Thom Law Photography
Highlight Norwich as a centre of culture and literature
Promote the outstanding publishing scene in our city and region
Welcome writers from all over the world to Norwich
Provide a space for writers in our residency cottage
“A place for something seminal to happen with every meeting.”
Ali Smith, patron of the National Centre for Writing
Image from the annual Noirwich Crime Writing Festival at Dragon Hall. © Joanna Millington
Every week our podcast talks to writers about their writing journeys, sharing tips and techniques along the way. Subscribe on iTunes, Google Podcasts, Stitcher or from your favourite podcast app.
Find out more about the references and story in the poem >>
And so they built it here
this city of incomers and refugees
where Boudicca’s chariot
first asserted her cause of public liberty.
They built it here because
our rivers run with ink,
enduring love and dark materials.
This place of language, pubs and churches
of ballads, plays and verses
where Dame Julian dared to conjured God as Mother.
Here where they threw wide the library doors
and said these shelves, these books, these words are yours.
Here where we du diffrunt, gob and lip
the job lot of us struck off the papal list.
Here where the Wensum meets the Yare
looking east to Europe.
Here where we fight for what is fair
the rights of man and woman.
Here the home of Hansard
and the first local rag
where hacks first dispatched in ink
the savagery of battle.
Here the home of Martineau,
of Bale, Borrow, Fry and Sewell
a plus ton of languages
darned with dialect
and printed on the page.
A thousand years of love and genius and rage
dispatched from this place
to change the world beyond.
And so they built it here.
