Events, Festivals & Projects

Some our most successful activities have been the Gearing Up and Narrative Drive writing courses for beginner and advanced writers, Beyond the Boundary projects which have succeeded in taking literature out to hard to reach communities including young Bengali men, members of the Somali community and homeless families in North London, and Write to Ignite, the first Hackney Word Festival.

Live events, spoken word, story-telling, literary discussions and author readings took place in venues around Hackney. Stars of the festival included, Orange Prize and Whitbread winner, Andrea Levy, Iain Sinclair, John Hegley, Lemn Sissay and new novelists Diana Evans and Valerie Mason-John.

Recent Successes

Write to Ignite

The Write to Ignite Hackney Word Festival was the borough's first dedicated literature festival.

Centerprise Literature Development Project was the lead organisation of a consortium of partners, including Hackney Libraries, The Learning Trust, Maya Productions and T-Bone Promotions. Funding came from the Hackney Strategic Partnership and the Arts Council's Grants for the Arts.

The Festival ran for four months from January to May 2005 in a packed programme built around a writer's residency. Adisa, as Hackney Poet Laureate, led workshops and assemblies in secondary schools across the borough on the theme of 'Hackney My Hackney' - which was also the subject of a borough-wide poetry competition. Alongside the schools programme, creative writing workshops for adults, for families and for teenagers were held in libraries and the Hackney Museum.

In a parallel programme of live events, spoken word, story-telling, literary discussions and author readings took place in venues around Hackney. Andrea Levy, right after she had bagged the Whitbread Book of the Year Award and the Orange Prize, was a star attraction. Iain Sinclair, John Hegley, Lemm Sissay and new novelists Diana Evans and Valerie Mason-John also brought in the crowds.

Nearly a thousand people attended the public programme of events and workshops and well over two thousand students took part in poetry workshops or performances in schools.

'This is my dream of a festival event: doors open late, the space flooded with light, people spilling out on to the street, chatting. A genuine meeting place where ideas can flow.'

'A great evening…the poetry was outstanding - thank you!'

'This event was very inspiring, as someone who is thinking of writing, being here and being part of this experience.'

This project was led by Spike Warwick a writer with considerable experience in training and group work, especially with 'marginalised' communities. Spike led eleven workshops with eight Somali students contacted through OSCA a support organisation for Somali refugees and asylum seekers in Bow.

The aims of the project were to enable participants to come to terms with life transitions through story-making and life-writing, record and validate transcultural experiences and to recall and preserve oral songs, stories, myths etc. from their cultures. Some sessions were for women only, some were mixed and two were for men only - although the tutor was female. The sessions were held at OSCA's premises in Bow and they also provided a support worker and interpreter.

Although the start-up process took longer than expected and the winter season made it harder for older people to be involved, the project went extremely well and produced much striking poetry, and considerable discussion around translating between the two languages (English and Somali Arabic).

This project demonstrates how much can be produced, especially when the workshop leader has the opportunity to work in a sustained way with a group of people. As she notes in her report 'we only scratched the surface of the potential interest.'

ALIVE! is an annual event at Centerprise designed to showcase our students work at the end of the academic year. It is a celebration of writing - an evening of live readings by students alongside a guest performer. Students, friends, family, the general public and agents/publishers are invited to gather together to share the fruits of their creativity in a celebratory and relaxed atmosphere. This Summer's event was at the Hackney Empire's Hospitality Suite with special guest, performance poet, Francesca Beard. Alive! gives our writers an enormous sense of achievement at the end of their course and offers a unique chance for them to read to an audience.

A collaboration with FUSION EAST's PARADISE GARDENS festival in Victoria Park. Centerprise ran a spoken word programme, The Stage Struck Truck. Paul Lyalls, Mark Gwynne Jones, Kat Francois and Baden Prince Jnr performed in a theatre inside a truck. There was a chance to write your own poem, exhibit it on the sides of the truck and take part in word-play and humour. The shows were a sell-out and, in the crazy extravaganza of these Victorian Pleasure Garden festivities, it was a chance for people to come into the truck, sit down, listen to poetry and take stock.