The beginnings
This is the introduction to an anthology we published of writers from the first Squad in 2003, imaginatively named New Work from the Writing Squad. It remains the best rationale of why we set up the Squad, so while the sporting heroes might have retired or be on the wane, the fundamentals remain the same. If you'd like a copy of the anthology mail Steve at the Writing Squad - steve@writingsquad.com
At first it was about football. We used to run into each other at literary events all over the north and after business retire to a pub somewhere and talk about how wonderful David Beckham and Paul Scholes were. You didn't have to support Manchester United to realise their youth academy had produced a core of footballers that provided the backbone of the Premiership's most successful team. And anyway, other teams were producing fresh young British talent through similar schemes: Michael Owen and Steve Gerrard at Liverpool, Rio Ferdinand at the West ham academy, and the rest. It was all about spotting talent young and nurturing it into adulthood.
To us as literary workers (as writers, editors, promoters, tutors and readers) there were obvious parallels with our own field. To write well, publish and build a career requires technical skills and a consciousness of the literary world's processes and shared practices. Writers write alone, most of the time, but they don't write in isolation from society, from audience and the people who occupy the jobs in the business of distributing literary text. But where were the equivalent academies for young British writers? We noted that in other arts and cultural disciplines youth had opportunities. A talented young musician or singer could get specialist training. A talented young athlete would be provided with dedicated facilities and a programme, like Denise Lewis, who won Olympic gold in Sydney.
Although some provision for imaginative writing exists in secondary school, a pupil would need to wait until university to find a dedicated writing degree. And it would be part of Humanities education with the emphasis on gaining a qualification. But what about non-academic youth or someone who wrote passionately, but wanted their qualification to be in, say, medicine? A long-held belief that writers emerge from isolation, their genius surfacing on the wings of chance and divine inspiration is at the root of the denial of such opportunity.
If football a similar attitude led to a huge gap in skills between British clubs and their continental counterparts in the 80s and early 90s. It was not until Manchester United studied the development of the youth academies in Holland and France that produced the great club and international teams of that era that we began to catch up. Their methods comprised working on innate skills and developing them with professional coaching in a group enterprise that emphasized the nature of the individual as part of a team. The basic skills of football once imbued and effortlessly applied, the player was free to add the kind of creative flourishes only assured self-confidence brought. We dreamed of an academy for Beckhams and Lewises whose talents were verbal. We wanted to find a group of aspiring writers aged between sixteen and twenty in our region and try an experiment.
We drafted a course that combined basic exercises with personal projects, group workshops and personal tutorials, and mutual support and critiquing that encouraged redrafting and fine-tuning. We called it the Writing Squad to establish its collective identity and emphasize the nature of progressive development under coaching. The internet offered a range of facilities that substituted for actual day-to-day physical contact. We found a base at Sheffield Hallam University, which provided a steering group, technical support and free rooms for a series of day schools. We needed to pay professionals to come in and teach. A successful bid to Yorkshire Arts Board secured the funding for a two-year project.
Then we recruited. Aiming for twenty we got nineteen starters from across the region, from the deep countryside to the big cities. They worked with writers like Julia Darling, with Peter Sansom, with the novelist Patricia Duncker who is also the Professor of Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia's famous MA. Ray Jenkins, the experienced TV and film writer, held a session. Gareth Crier, a novelist who graduated from the Sheffield Hallam Writing MA, taught a class on structure. We are big on structure and technique. A journalist, Nick Morgan, did a session on selling freelance writing. Linda Lee Welch, the performance poet, made everyone sing and dance to project personality into reading aloud.
Of course not all stayed the distance. Our dropout rate was factored in from the start. But we were surprised by how many are still here; even some of those who have moved away, to London, to Warwick, to Tokyo on gap years, studying for degrees. Our core group is eager to continue to help the next group of recruits and learn teaching and workshop skills, as we build continuity into the work. We have been awarded a second two-year tranche of funding by Arts Council England.
This book is a collection of writing from the members who have stayed with us throughout. It is the product of our experiment: work-in-progress. Poetry, prose fiction, dramatic script and some other not easily classified writing. Some of it has been written as exercises, some of it is ongoing personal work. Some of it has been written for regional and national competitions (where members have enjoyed a measure of success). We hope you see signs, as we do, that there is much more to come as our writers grow, gain experience and make their way in the world as writers.
Danny Broderick, Steve Dearden, September 2003
