How to develop your creative practice with Julia Bird

Julia Bird is a highly experienced poetry programmer who has worked for organisations including the Poetry School and The Poetry Society. As a freelancer, she’s worked for literary development agencies, festivals, publishers and magazines, and in arts, university and healthcare settings. Through her company Jaybird Live Literature she has produced eight Arts Council England-funded touring poetry shows; and she is the author or co-author of six poetry collections.

She sits down with NCW Programme Officer Ellie to discuss practical advice for those looking to pursue a creative career. Together, they explore how structured mentoring can help writers to develop their practice, guidance for bringing out the vibrancy of your ideas in funding applications, and the barriers writers and creatives may face along the way.

Interested in learning more from Julia? Book a mentoring session with her now →

Transcript

STEPH

Welcome to The Writing Life, the podcast for everyone who writes. I’m your host, Steph, coming to you from the National Centre for Writing and our Literature House in Norwich, UNESCO City of Literature.

In today’s episode, we’re joined by the incredible poet, producer and mentor, Julia Bird. Julia shares invaluable insights into developing your creative practice. That is the unique, intentional approach to your creative writing. That might include new approaches, ways to grow your audience, and strategies for overcoming both creative and practical challenges. Julia is a seasoned poetry programmer, having worked with renowned organisations like the Poetry School and the Poetry Society. As a freelancer, she’s collaborated with literary development agencies, festivals, publishers and magazines, as well as in arts, university in healthcare settings. Through her company, Jaybird Live Literature, she’s produced eight Arts Council England funded touring poetry shows and is the author, or co-author, of six poetry collections.

Julia sat down with NCW Programme Officer Ellie to share her practical advice for developing your creative practice. Together, they discuss how structured mentoring can help writers refine their craft, tips for bringing your ideas to life and funding applications, and the challenges writers often face along the way. So now, I shall hand over to my colleague Ellie in conversation with Julia Bird.

 

ELLIE

Hi, Julia, thanks so much for joining me today!

 

JULIA

Very welcome. Nice to be here on a sunny day!

 

ELLIE

It is! It’s also the first time we’ve ever actually met in person, even though we have been working together for a few months, so it feels quite special.

 

JULIA

Aww, thank you!

 

ELLIE

We’re letting everybody else in-

 

JULIA

On the magic.

 

ELLIE

Yeah. (both laughing)

 

ELLIE

So, before we dive into the conversation, do you want to tell us a little bit about yourself and maybe your journey into the arts – through the arts – and everything that entails?

 

JULIA

Well, I’ve been an arts administrator for as long as I’ve been at work. I remember when I was about 18 or 19, I saw an advert in The Stage that said ‘Trainee Graduate Arts Administrator wanted for the Almeida Theatre’ and I thought ‘What’s that? That sounds like something I might like to do!’ And then I sort of pursued that ever since, through various routes.

Latterly I’ve worked in lots and lots of literature organisations. I’ve worked for the Poetry School and the Poetry Society, and various other sort of freelance bits and pieces, mostly in programming and participation and learning roles. But, for about ten years, I had a lot of literature production company, Jaybird Live Literature, which specialised in putting page poets on stage.

So, combining page poets with theatre directors and musicians and lighting designers to create a theatrical experience. Not a dramatic experience, it was a theatrical experience that we made into touring shows, and we went, you know, up to St Andrews and down to Truro, and had a very lovely time doing that for ten years. And, as part of that practice with Jaybird, for each project I did for each tour I did, I had a trainee; so maybe a trainee director or a trainee producer.

And I really liked that relationship of being able to pass on what I knew and what I was in the process of learning, and it got that people would ask me for a bit of advice about how to put together their own tours, and sometimes I’d do that for individuals, sometimes I’d do it for groups of people. And because I have come from a professional background where there’s always people learning, there are always students or masterclasses or something like that going on, sort of all those experiences morphed in together to come to yourselves and offer 1 to 1 mentoring sessions that are about what I’ve learned from touring, but also pull in from all, all the other highways and byways I’ve been in my arts admin career.

 

ELLIE

Yeah, many strings to your bow, if you will. So, we are going to get into a big conversation and mentoring.

 

JULIA

Yes.

 

ELLIE

And how that can help writers and what you’ve learned from it, as well as what they’ve taken away. And before we do that, I want to start at developing creative practice. I want to have a chat about that. Because that is what we are partly here to discuss. And we may also touch on income and finance, which is an interesting topic when you’re talking about writers. Everyone has an opinion.

 

JULIA

We love that! (both laughing)

 

ELLIE

We love it.

And, whilst we’re not going to tackle that entire topic today in its many complex layers, hopefully by the end of our conversation will have provided a bit of hope, some practical advice on that topic and just a bit of sense of context, of why? Why are we creatives? Is it to make the big bucks? I’ll let you guess that one for yourself.

But let’s start with the term. So, creative practice, developing creative practice. What does that actually mean?

 

JULIA

I think, to me, it sort of – maybe it goes back to the observation I have about the difference in the solitary life of the writer and the social life of the writer. And I’m a poet. I’ve worked with poets and that that sort of mix between what you are doing as an individual writer on your laptops, in your notebooks, scribbling away in your attics individually, and then how that work reaches a community.

And if that’s your performing to your community, your publishing to your community, your making with your community – I find that really interesting. That sort of switch between those two, those two states. And I think, for me, the development part comes in where you make that move between what you’re doing as an individual writer, what are the things that are obsessing you that you want to embody and bring into the world, and then how you share them, and all the different routes that you might share them through?

 

ELLIE

Yeah.

 

JULIA

Yeah. How does that sound? (both laughing)

 

ELLIE

I think that’s, yeah, I think that sounds lovely. I mean, much nicer than some sort of Oxford English Dictionary definition.

 

JULIA

Oh, no, I don’t really do them.

 

ELLIE

Quite dry.

 

JULIA

No. (both laughing)

 

ELLIE

That was much more of a poet’s answer.

I wonder, would you be able to share, either from your personal experience with Jaybird, or perhaps from mentorships that you’ve been taking on in more recent time, an example of what that has looked like, when someone has tried to develop their creative practice.

 

JULIA

I can talk about a couple of the mentees that I’ve been working on through your scheme, and I’ll go a bit light on the details because I don’t want to identify anybody. But I worked with one person who was wildly ambitious. She had loads of ideas of all the different sorts of things that she wanted to do around her writing.

She wanted to teach, she wanted to do residencies, she wanted to- she wanted to make films, she wanted to publish. And she was- the ideas were sort of fizzing off her. But how we work together was just to go back to the core project of the writerly project that she wanted to work on. And then how that might be prioritised and scheduled and made into a timeline, so we could establish what the writing project was, and then how organically, maybe a film might come out of that, or a residency or some teaching around it.

So, I think what I am able to do, in the mentorship relationship, is just put sort of some structures, some arts admin structures – the ones that I’ve been dealing with hope my whole career. But they, as we were saying in our preparatory chat, those are things that we’ve had to learn. Just because they come easy to us now, we have to learn them. And I can pass a bit of that on and say, right, this is how you shape your marvellous ideas into something that is going to be able to be delivered practically.

So, I worked with her, and then another person I was working with – she had a really interesting idea about a novel she wanted to write that was reflecting her dual heritage. So, her family’s life in one country and her life in a different country. And she’d put an application in, a funding application, to the Arts Council. It hadn’t worked, but she came to me and we looked at it and we said, ‘right now, this needs to be more specific. These are the people I need to talk to when I fly out and do my tour round, my- the place where my parents came from. This is what I’m going to achieve in the first month. This is what I’m going to achieve in the second month. This is this is a structure that I’m going to be able to sort of measure myself again and put the application in again’, and it worked.

 

ELLIE

Congratulations! Hurrah.

 

JULIA

It was really satisfying.

 

ELLIE

Yeah, I can imagine! (both laughing)

Well, you’re seeing that transfer of your abundance of knowledge actually put into practice.

 

JULIA

Just a few sort of like shapings and redirections and nudges and to bring out the brilliance of the ideas and the vibrance of the ideas, but just to make them function practically. I think that’s what I can do.

 

ELLIE

Amazing.

Let’s stick with mentoring then, for a little bit. So, it sounds like generally you found the experience of mentoring to be positive.

 

JULIA

I have!

 

ELLIE

I wonder how that transition has been. You mentioned that your first, whilst it’s not explicitly mentoring, you used to work with trainees when you would do your touring shows and now, the mentoring that we offer at National Centre for Writing and you are one of our mentors, is quite structured.

It’s a commercial scheme. And the idea is that we offer writers one-on-one support to develop their writing and practice wherever they’re at in that journey. You focus specifically on career advice, funding applications, this kind of development side of things, as opposed to the text on the page. Although I have no doubt you could probably lend your hand to that, too.

But, I wonder, what’s the difference been?

 

JULIA

I think maybe that, you know, the trainees I was working with were all new graduates, so they’re in their really early 20s. The whole world is open to them. Their responsibilities are not weighing on them. They’ve got lots of options and they’re exploring lots of things; they’re going to try a bit of this, try a bit of that. So the sort of page is clearer for them.

But with the mentees that I’m working with, with you, they’ve generally got a bit of life experience under their belt. They can’t just drop everything and go off in a world tour because they’ve got kids at home or they’ve got jobs or other responsibilities.

So, I like thinking about the practical ways that we can find to make sure that writing can be a part of someone’s life. Writing or lucrative writing – those two things sometimes are separate and sometimes are the same thing, but just to fit into people’s real lives. I don’t make any promises, when people come to me.

It hasn’t happened so often now, I think maybe, maybe the sort of, zeitgeist is changing a little bit, but I used to get invited to panels with the names, like, ‘how do you make a living as a poet?’ And my answer is ‘probably can’t. Probably don’t even try’. (laughing) ‘But here is how you can make poetry part of your career, or part of the way that you live your life, sometimes you might earn some money from it, and here are the best- or here are some ways that I think we can sort of access some of those roots for you,’ without being- advising everybody that’s going to chuck in their lucrative accountancy careers to go and be a touring poet and make a living from that.

 

ELLIE

Yeah, absolutely. I think that’s very practical advice. Honesty is helpful, you know. Ignorance is bliss, until you decide to quit your job and go on a poetry tour.

You mentioned Arts Council. And as anyone who has attempted to get funding through the arts or has some knowledge of the industry, that name is probably very familiar. But let’s assume that we’ve got someone listening who is a writer, who’s interested in taking that next step to try and bring their work to a community, or to try something a little bit different, or just is ready for a bit of expansion and whatever that may be. And this is their first time foraying into that space.

Arts Council. Who are they? What do they do and why are we interested in them?

 

JULIA

Well, having earned pretty much every penny that I’ve ever earned has come via the Arts Council in one format or another, I am completely institutionalised. So my understanding runs so deep, sometimes hard to articulate it for people who are coming to it, new, for the first time. But the Arts Council is a vehicle by which the government, at arm’s length, funds some of the arts in this country. And, roughly speaking, they are charged with funding organisations and they’re charged with funding individuals.

And there’s all sorts of sort of criteria and priorities about different sorts of art forms that they want to foster at different times, different places that they want to focus on, different audiences, different sorts of experiences. But, basically, if you want to think about it, it’s a source of money for artists. And some of those artists are writers, and there are various ways that writers can access some of this money.

Perhaps the most relevant fund that we’re talking about for the people who’d be coming for a mentor relationship, would be the Developing your Creative Practice fund. So, I think my best advice would be to look at the Arts Council website, because it’s detailed in very plain terms, who this money’s for and how you how you access it.

But it’s it goes in rounds. So you can apply at different times in the year. You can go for between – at the moment, it’s between 2 and 12,000 pounds. And you can use that money to support you as you write. Or you can use that money to spend time researching or working on a project. There are other funds of money that are available to small organisations or large organisations, but we can go into them maybe in part two of this podcast. But Developing your Creative Practice is the one that you want to look at, at the moment.

I think the interesting thing to bear in mind is that word ‘development’. So if you are a novelist and you’ve been writing novels for 20 years and you want money to write another novel, that’s not a compelling case that you’re making, that you’re developing your work because you’re wanting to do more of the same, more, more of that same marvellous writing but, in terms of what the Arts Council want to see happen to artists, it’s not a development.

If you are a novelist and you want to say, well, how do I put my work on stage? Or how do I make it into an audiobook? Or how do I find a different audience for what it is that I’m that I’m what I’m doing? Can I make a project out of that? That’s when people’s ears start to prick up, I think. It’s the movement between something you’ve done and something that you want to do that’s different. I think that’s what’s that’s what’s interesting.

The process of applying for Arts Council funding is complicated, you have to be a good form filler.  But, if you’re not a good form filler for whatever reason, they do also have a good access support scheme, so you can access people who eat forms for breakfast, who can help you, help you put applications together. And that’s something that I can do, too. I can help you think about your project in terms of its budget, in terms of its timeline, in terms of how it’s going to be marketed.

So the money is there. It’s hard to winkle out. But there are people there who can help. And I think it’s a- give it a go. Give it a go.

 

ELLIE

Definitely, definitely. It’s worth saying, also, the National Centre for Writing is very heavily funded by Arts Council England. They’ve been a big support for us. I’m pretty sure they’re somehow, in some roundabout way, paying my wage, so thank you very much.

 

JULIA

We tip our hat to the Arts Council. (both laughing)

 

ELLIE

So, but definitely worth looking at, I completely agree. Their website is not designed to confuse, it is designed to explain and inform. And it is worth spending some time. They are not the only source of funding for project grants and for developing your creative practice grants. There are others, but we don’t need to give away all of your secrets, right here, right now. Perhaps we will save that for for part two, if you like that.

So, I wonder if we can have a chat about barriers. And what I mean by that is that we’re talking a lot about the support that is available and how best to access it. And in acknowledgement that it is there, that there is support available.

But in my experience of interacting with writers over the last few years, I think they often don’t know that it’s available or they feel that it’s not for them, or there is some distance happening between the writer and the access to the funding. And I wonder what your experience has been of that. Is it a misconception and, actually, that’s not been your experience?

 

JULIA

I wouldn’t want to downplay the barriers that people experience, because I know those that are real and true and exist. I do know that people work very hard to try and identify what is it that is stopping a particular demographic of writer or an individual writer from accessing this support, which is open to everybody and wants to be open to everyone?

That doesn’t mean to say they always get it right. And I don’t underestimate sometimes the courage it can take to say, well, I’ve, you know, I’ve got to hurdle the fact that I have got three hours to myself a week and that’s it. Or I don’t come from a background or an upbringing that is sort of comfortable talking about myself as a writer or believing that I have something creative to offer the world, and it takes a lot of energy to dismiss those, those little voices in your head before you even get going.

It has changed since I’ve been looking. The amount of women that are- poetry’s my specialty so that’s what I know most about –  so the amount of women that have been published has changed, the amount of writers of colour has changed, most dramatically since the period I’ve been looking –  sort of 20, 25 years – the ability for people to say, ‘do you know what? I don’t want to submit my work to one of only six mainstream poetry publishers. I’m just going to find out how to do this myself with my friends. I’m going to set up a publishing house myself. We might be really small. We might publish two books a year, but that’s what we’re going to do.’ And just that ability to break open the space, that has changed in the period that I’ve been working, and it’s been really enlivening to watch that and be a part of that.

 

ELLIE

I think that’s a beautiful sentiment. And, particularly in Norwich and in Norfolk, where National Centre for Writing is based, there is such a thriving, rich literary community that is local. That is what is so important about it. And I have no doubt there are sectors of it that I haven’t even had the pleasure yet of coming across. We have so many indie publishers that it is just sometimes two friends who’ve set something up and they want to start. Or writing groups that take it really seriously and offering proper support, not just for the work on the page, but the person behind the work, which can be overlooked and actually is by far the more important part of this.

 

JULIA

I think there is sort of two things that I’d like to sort of pick out of what you’ve just said there. First thing is that I’m doing just that: my friends and I are doing a long term micro-publishing project. We’re publishing handmade Leporello books, which are like zigzag folded books. We’re going to do five at a time for five years, and it’s fantastic. Nobody’s going to make more than 50p out of any of this. But it is such a social, creative, intellectual, artistic joy to be poking around in this like a very, very shallow bits of homemade publishing.

And the other thing was this idea of people building communities. Helen Ivory, who I know is one of she’s one of your locals; I have been so inspired by what she’s done around her book that’s coming out, or has just come out, the Constructing a Witch collection. She set up a writing group called ‘The Coven’, which is, a women’s- well, women and women identifying, I think, writing group that is focussed around the issues that she is exploring in her book. And I’ve been to a couple of sessions. It’s a really discrete focus and building community, but also building profile for the book. I think it’s really clever how she’s, tapped into that idea.

 

ELLIE

Yeah. Of course it’s called ‘The Coven’. Of course it is. That’s brilliant!

Yeah, I think that’s really true. And of course, financial support is important. It allows us to realize creative passions, to develop creative passions. And I do think that it’s true, for the most part, that creatives are there for the passion and for the creativity, perhaps, rather than some paycheck. And we can get quite hung up on this idea of quote unquote ‘making a living’ from writing, when actually we are just living and trying to be creative at the same time. And there is no blueprint for how that happens. But there are ways and there is advice.

But kind of carrying on from what you’re saying around the creation of community and those spaces. I have found people to be incredibly generous in offering support in other ways that are not a large paycheck, in other ways that allows people to realise their creativity or to develop their practice in whatever way that is.

And I wonder if you’ve come across in your time experience of that, as well. You’ve mentioned Helen Ivory and her Coven. Yes. I will be emailing and saying, excuse me, where is my invite?

 

JULIA

Your invitation? (both laughing)

 

ELLIE

But yeah, I wonder if you come across any others.

 

JULIA

Who do I rate who is good at building community around their work? Well, the High Priestess, if we’re going to expect extends the witchy metaphors, is Jo Bell. So, a while ago, she started off her project called- I think it was called ‘52’, which was gathering a group of people who would respond to prompts, one week, and they did it for a year.

And it came. I think a book came out of that, so you can follow the follow the prompts yourself, but talking to somebody I’ve known for a good while, her experience with that 52 project led her to develop a community called the Poetic License, which benefits from the online gathering skills that we have all fermented during Covid. And it’s about prompts and interviews, and I reflections on the creativity in community.

And it’s something that you pay to join, but it’s not you know, it doesn’t compare to the cost of an MA or anything like that. And it’s how Jo finds her people and Jo’s people find each other. I think it’s brilliant. I think it’s a fantastic idea that she’s come up with and driven it forward. So, yeah, she’d be the person that I would rate most highly, I think, in this, in this space.

 

ELLIE

Do you hear that, Jo? You are a high priestess, congratulations. (both laughing) I think that’s a wonderful, wonderful project, really accessible, really special. I’m gonna have to look up 52.

 

JULIA

52. That’s it.

 

ELLIE

Amazing. I wonder if we can bring it back for a moment to where someone would begin. So they maybe have a vague notion of what they want to do with their development, with their creativity, with their writing. And they’ve never worked yet with a mentor. They’ve not applied for funding or anything like that. And let’s keep it poetry specific, so that we’re in your in your ballpark.

Where would they begin? Where would they look for information? Where would they- who would they turn to? What would be step one?

 

JULIA

I think step one is, again, find your people. So, where are people going to hear poetry live? Are there open mic nights or similar readings happening in your area that you can go along to, introduce yourself, become part of the sea of faces in that community? Or, if that isn’t going to be possible for you, what can you do online?

I know that Kim Moore and Clare Shaw are another pair of people who do online teaching, online gathering, they’ve got like a specific focus on accessibility, so check them out. Sign up to every single publisher’s newsletter, go to or be in contact with small publishers fairs, small press fairs. What’s the other local art centre, art scene, in your area?

Literature happens in theatres, in music festivals, all over. I think it’s a real networking exercise to the level you’re comfortable with. You might not like being out and sociable, but online might work for you. So just do as much of that, I think. And I think projects get cooked up between people.

If you’re wanting to- if you’re an individual writer saying, ‘right, I want to publish or I want to make a show or I want to sort out a residency’, I think it can be really hard to do just off your own bat. So you just need you just need a person to talk to. And that could be somebody formal in a mentoring session with me or one of the other excellent people on your roster.

Or it could be that you find somebody who’s in the same boat as you, and you’re figuring it out together. I wish there were, but there isn’t a directory of ‘here are the best hundred poets jobs this week’ that you can apply for. It doesn’t exist. I’d be down there going, yes, I fancy that one if they were, but there isn’t that sort of thing.

Projects come out of mad ideas, kicked up over a cup of tea and you just say, ‘oh well, I’m, I know somebody at that National Trust property. I wonder if they could tell me who’s the person who might be able to say, yeah, come and be a poet in residence for a week. We would like you to write three poems and then you can have the freedom of the garden to go and write as much as you like about box hedges or whatever your interest is.’

 

ELLIE

How did you know? (both laughing)

So, immersion.

 

JULIA

Immersion, yes.

 

ELLIE

Immersion is a big way to do it. And then put the kettle on and invite some people for a chat.

 

JULIA

Yes. Yeah.

 

ELLIE

I would also add to that, coming from my professional head at NCW. So NCW is the Literature House for the East of England, primarily, but there will be one wherever you are based, if you’re in the UK. Abroad I’m sure, also, but I know a lot more about the UK. There will be one near you.

The advantage of contacting the one closest to you is they will know about local charities you may want to reach out to. They may even have open mic nights or events that you can come to. And often they will have accessible routes into that: free events, free resources, things online, all these kinds of things.

 

JULIA

Exactly. It’s their job to foster readers, foster writers, get them together, sort of provide the space by which amazing creativity can happen, and also getting better and better at saying ‘it’s not one size fits all for everybody’. People have different levels of interest in and tolerance for getting out there and talking to lots of people. There will be a way that that can happen whatever, you know, standing you’re in.

 

ELLIE

Definitely. If you haven’t got someone who you’ve yet found to bounce your ideas off, send them an email, send your local- send us an email! Email NCW. Email whoever is your local literature charity and splurge in there and see what they come back with. Because, odds are, you’ll be met with enthusiasm and a couple of good ideas.

So, to finish off, what I would love to ask and again, don’t give away your secrets, but let’s give them a taste. So, if were sitting down and you’re working with someone to write a funding bid, or they’re coming to you with a version of a bid that they have tried to submit, what would be a couple of your top tips?

 

JULIA

My top tips are:

Pacing and timing. Things always take longer than you think they’re going to. So if you are wanting to get everything done by February 2025, think about February 2026. Then that is going to give yourself room to think and reflect and grow and cope with any unexpected bumps in the road and just not give you time panic.

Think about your community: Are you looking for readers? Are you looking for audience members? Are you looking to form a little writerly project gang? But there are pleasures to be had writing solitary in your attic, and those are valid pleasures.

If you are starting to approach the idea that you might like some public money to help you realise these ideas, we have to think about how the public is going to benefit. So, we’re not going to fill the O2, we don’t have to worry about the audiences in the six figures, but we do have to think about, well, ‘this is how I’m going to share my work’. It might be that ‘I’m going to make it into posters, and it’s going to go in my local cafe, and all the cake-eaters are going to see it.’ Or it might be that ‘I’m going to do a performance and 60 people are going to come and see it.’ But you have to think about how you get the work out into the world. How the world shares.

 

ELLIE

Definitely, definitely. And the world is interested, you know. I’ve never met people that love stories about someone else’s writing more than writers; constantly reading, constantly engaging, constantly just getting quite excited discussing what we love with each other. So, be confident in in your pursuit because other people would like to know about it. Absolutely no doubt they would.

 

JULIA

It’s Black Friday today and I was going to go on a protest and buy nothing, and I failed completely. And what has failed me is buying Orbital, the Booker Prize winner. So, I just- I can’t help it folks. Maybe I’ll give myself a pass when buying books and not tech and nonsense, but.

 

ELLIE

I think we’ll allow a book. And a good book, at that. (both laughing)

That’s amazing. Well, thank you so much for sitting down and speaking to me today. Also, for offering part two, which I will so hold you to, and we will be back. And then maybe that point you can, you can tell us about this attic you keep mentioning, some pictures.

 

JULIA

Ah, my attic.

 

ELLIE

Very mystical sort of space. Perhaps it’s where the Coven reside, and there’s lots of tea. So you can tell me if my fake version I’ve create in my head is accurate at all.

But if people do want to know more about our mentoring scheme, head to our website and have a look at our Academy section and you’ll find Julia’s profile on there and a little bit more about what she may be able to do to help you to develop your creative practice and get your work out into the world.

Thank you so much, Julia.

 

JULIA

It’s been a pleasure.

 

STEPH

A huge thank you to Julia Bird and to Ellie for sharing their time and insights with us today. If you found this conversation helpful and you want to dive deeper into developing your creative practice, Julia offers one-to-one mentoring sessions online through NCW Academy. She specialises in working with writers who are ready to connect with their audiences and build sustainable income streams.

With her wealth of experience, Julia is uniquely positioned to guide you through routes to publication, help you hone your performance skills and support you in creating events or shows to elevate your creative work. To learn more, visit nationalcentreforwriting.org.uk/academy/mentoring.

If you have any questions, or you’d like to get in touch, you can find us on social media @writerscentre on Instagram and Blue Sky, or on Facebook.

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Thanks for listening. Keep writing and I’ll catch you on the next episode.