Walkshop and soundshot – a dérive and participatory performance

As a writer and tutor of creative writing, I am often presented with the expectation that writing is a solitary, internal process. Author readings focus on the delivery of finished work to an audience: the creative workshop, while a communal, participatory experience, can be an ordeal for the self-conscious student. As a tutor, I strive to find ways of making the act of creating and sharing text as painless as possible, and often use performance-based approaches to help deliver this. I am particularly interested in the discussion around participation that this symposium offers, and how the act of participation can become a form of aesthetic experience itself.

Much of my current practice-based research draws upon psychogeography and site-specific writing. I am interested in the relationship between walking and ideation, and how embodied experience of place informs creative work. How can form be used to represent or respond to place? In this walkshop and soundshot, I aim to bring together individual, interpretive experience with a performance-based, participatory approach to written text. This exercise has developed from ice-breaker workshops with writers who have no previous experience of sharing their creative work.