SQUADS CONFERENCES

Young People's Writing Squads Conferences

 

North Conference, Wrexham, Gwersyllt Resource Centre, 19 May 2009

South Conference, Swansea, Dylan Thomas Centre, 10 June 2009

 

Our two Young People’s Writing Squad Conferences were a big success with representatives from almost every local authority in Wales attending. The first conference took place in Wrexham in May, while the second one was held in Swansea in June. Both conferences were aimed at existing Squad organisers, new prospective organisers and interested staff from different local authorities.

 

At the Squad Conference in Wrexham, writer Francesca Kay talked about her experience of working with youngsters and gave hands-on advice. Denbighshire Squad Organiser Bethan Hughes and Neath Port Talbot Squad Organiser Tracy Evans gave an insight into how Squads are run in their areas, while Gwen Lasarus James discussed the Gwynedd Squads. There was plenty of networking opportunity on the day and as a direct result, we’re now in discussion with Flintshire County Council and Mentor Iaith on Anglesey to establish new squads in the areas.

Robert Minhinick opened the Swansea conference with a brilliant speech on the importance of nourishing young writers from an early age (read Robert’s full speech below). We also heard from Merthyr Squad Organiser Gus Payne, Neath Port Talbot Squad Organiser Tracy Evans and Cardiff Squad Organiser Glyn Scott. All delivered brilliant insights into the day-to-day running of a Squad and held inspirational workshops that offered opportunities for delegates to exchange ideas. Mererid Hopwood also contributed to the day with an excellent overview of ‘dos and don’ts’ when working with writers and young people. 

 

 

The following speech was given by Robert Minkinnick at the Swansea Conference on 10 June, 2009:

It's funny. I'm a qualified English teacher but I've never taught. Conversely, I've never deliberately sought work as a writer in schools (I've sometimes avoided it), yet I've worked with thousands of school children - always encouraging their creative writing.

This talk is titled 'working with young people - a writer's perspective'- but much of that is really more applicable to the following workshop.

Yes, I'm going to speak about writing squads, but there has to be a political and social context for the squads. What might the children write about?

Everywhere we are facing big problems.

We have climate change to deal with. According to leading scientist Nicholas Stern, in 100 years, the world will be 5 degrees Celsius hotter.

This will bring about staggering alteration to the way people have to live. (Though if you think about it, the last 100 years have also brought about a blizzard of once unimaginable change).

So everyone is worried about their carbon footprint. Yet personally I'm more concerned with the intellectual footprints of our children.

As to the Credit Crunch, there won't be much money for pensions in the future - especially for people who are now teenagers. Their teachers and arts administrators will have had it all.

But maybe what's more important is ensuring we have a different kind of pension - an intellectual pension.

What does that mean? It means having intimate connection and engagement with the arts, science and the natural world. Now this should bring real enrichment to a financially-challenged old age.

Practising an art form from school age, such as that encouraged by writing squads, might ensure such enrichment, such a pension.

In Wales, at least in English. we have few valid traditional role models. That's good. It should mean we're not chained to the past. We can create new identities.

And that's what Wales and the world need. A healthy diversity of identity and aspiration.. Not the monoculture of one industry such as coal or IT or call centres.

As to the Credit Crunch, it might mean we are going to have to live in new ways. Personally, I hope that happens. These new ways could be better ways.

I don't want us to go back to how it was before the banking crisis. I don't want business as usual. Because ideally, our lives should be less materialistic, less work-stressed, and much more creative.

I hope the Credit Crunch means the end of an era when we were judged for what we owned or possessed, rather than who we were. As the new US President says, judged on the contents of your character not your bank account.

But is it going to happen? In my own Bridgend constituency last Thursday, the BNP came from zero to 5% of the vote. In 1989 the Greens got 11%. This time it was 5%. So the world's not as I want it to be.

DH Lawrence, although writing 80 years before the Credit Crunch, seems to sum up the 30 years of the Thatcher-Blair-Brown era, an era I hope we're emerging from, in a poem called 'Modern Prayer':

Almighty Mammon, make me rich!
Make me rich quickly, with never a hitch
In my fine prosperity! Kick those in the ditch
Who hinder me, Mammon, great Son of a Bitch.

If we read writers like Lawrence, the chances are we will be inspired to make our own writing.

Writing is the easiest and most obvious way of making art. It needs no technology at all, relying entirely on the human imagination. Oral poetry after all can be composed and retained in the memory.

But in a less materialistic, time rich Wales, I think EVERYONE should make art. They should write, sing, compose, paint, act, cook, sculpt, dance. These practises, borne from the imagination, are integral to what we call sustainable development.

Three weeks ago I attended the launch of the Wales sustainable development strategy, at Hay on Wye. It was a big deal that went largely unreported. Rhodri Morgan made a good speech. There was wonderful food and wine. Loads of it. But I was there because of my attachment to the charity, Sustainable Wales. Not because I write.

I looked round the audience. It was composed entirely of the usual green and political suspects. Who weren't there? The writers weren't there. The Artists. Teachers. Head teachers. Arts administrators. Council arts officers. The Arts Council of Wales wasn't there.

Political administration after administration has failed to understand the overarching importance of the arts, and that the arts are the core of sustainable development.

Want a cure for obesity? Look to the arts. Want to find a way to cut the numbers of pupils who leave our comprehensives with no qualifications? Use the arts.

Want to increase civic engagement? Use the arts. Want to inject meaning into life? The arts. Want something more than the grind of making money and the pointless, heartbreaking and soul-shrivelling acquisition of 'stuff'. The arts.

And maybe, above all, we should ask whether we need a new way to treat the appalling rates of poor mental health in south Wales.

If so - the answer is The arts. Look at the facts. The Valleys lead the UK league for prescriptions of anti depressants. In Torfaen, it's hard to credit, but one in every ten prescriptions issued is for such medication. Merthyr, Rhondda Cynon Taf, Bridgend, Caerffili, Neath/Port Talbot are close behind.

If we want an alternative to these expensive chemicals, then we must foster more arts initiatives such as writing squads. Am I being fanciful? I don't think so.

Of course, there are other benefits. The arts are how small countries generate big profiles. Think of Iceland, Ireland and Scotland, where cultural practice and identity create a global profile. Where real artistic achievement - not meaningless celebrity - promotes what might be deemed 'the national brand'. And Writing squads can only help nurture our art scene.

I think south Wales is an angry place. Anger is often caused by frustration. Frustration smashes shop windows. But eventually it can also be creative. A great way to deal with frustration is by some form of art - Punk Rock, socialist poetry, scrap iron sculpture, psychedelic rock, the blues, learning a language, and reading, reading, always reading.

Always reading, whatever else we do. Because if we don't read we're betraying our heritage and even worse, we are impoverishing ourselves.

One of the most important things a writer working with young people can do is create the appetite for reading.

I sense a great deal of frustration in society these days. Thus it's an ideal and vital time for initiatives such as writing squads.

We're talking here about writing squads for schoolchildren. Wonderful. But we need more than one in every borough, we need one in every town.

And personally I think there should be writing squads for adults - squads that revolutionise the repetitive existence of the writers' groups and writers' circles.

One of the reasons why so many cultural promotion agencies exist in Wales is to tell the world that here is a distinctive country with a fantastic landscape and long history and modern culture.

That's why Welsh artists and writers and singers are sent abroad so often - to try to prove to the good people of Los Angeles or Lithuania or London that Wales actually exists, and people make art there. If we still have cheap air flight in the future (which I doubt), writing squad members will be making those trips.

Yes, every county borough in Wales should have a squad. And many boroughs should have 2 or 3.

A word to the county boroughs. If you don't have a squad now - or soon - something is very wrong.

After all, you have the Academi proposing and fostering the squad idea, and there are umpteen writers in Wales who have honed their teaching skills on the Writers on Tour programme, which has been running for 30 years? So these people can lead the squads.

Moreover, it should be an embarrassment for a council arts officer to admit that his or her borough has no writing squad. Not having a squad should soon be seen as a badge of backwardness.

Squads are important because they introduce children to writers. And writers can be very important role models. Just meeting writers who live in the community is valuable, to show that it's possible.

Writers should not be some exotic and remote species that doesn't exist in your community. Writers are not freakish specimens that have evolved separately to the rest of us, like those fantastic creatures on the South Pacific BBC2 tv programme. That would be absurd.

I have a book on the WJEC A level set text list, and recently I've spoken to many sixth formers who are reading the book. I've been impressed with them and their intelligent questions. But when I ask them if they write themselves, the answers are disappointing.

I think the existence of writing squads would give young people like these, extra confidence, and introduce them to a world where writing is not an interesting hobby but a fundamental part of life. And that's what the arts need to be - fundamental.

Robert Minhinnick, June 2009