Led by New Writing North, England’s seven regional literature development agencies are working together on High Street Tales, a nationwide project with Historic England to celebrate the future of the local high street.
They will commission stories for seven towns and cities across England exploring the communities who live there and the role that their high street plays for them. Each agency will commission one writer to create a story from one town.
You will be a socially-engaged writer, experienced at working with local communities and arts and culture organisations, who either lives in the town in question, is from there, or who has a connection to the town that would inform and make richer this commission.
The story that you create will be recorded as a podcast, made into an audio book and e-book with the other stories from across England and you and your story will also feature in a documentary podcast that tells the story of the project as a whole.
The fee for the project which includes the commissioned story and the delivery of two workshops, research time and documentation is £3,000. Please note that work on the story will need to be completed by the end of December 2020.
High Street Tales is part of the cultural programme of the High Street Heritage Action Zones (HAZ) project run by Historic England. Its aim is to create a set of stories to be broadcast and distributed online that celebrate the local high street, the people and communities who depend on them and centre their lives around theirs, and the roles they have played – and will continue to play – in our lives.
Details:
New Writing North/North Shields here
Literature Works/Weston Super-Mare here
National Centre for Writing/ Great Yarmouth here
New Writing South/Hastings here
Spread the Word/Woolwich (Royal Borough of Greenwich) here
Writing East Midlands/Leicester here
Writing West Midlands/Wednesbury here
Deadline (for all seven commissions): Monday 2 November 2020