Creative Writing - Working with others
Creative Writing staff have developed a number of working
relationships with others locally, regionally, nationally and
internationally. For example, the programme includes a Level 2
module dedicated to graduate employability. Students undertake a
fifteen-day work placement to try out the kinds of work which
graduates might go on to do – we have an established relationship
with a York-based arts magazine, which regularly provides placement
opportunities for our students. Enterprising students in the
past have found placements with national publications such as Vogue
magazine and The Daily Telegraph. Every year we welcome
international students from a range of different countries – this
has enabled us to build working relationships with academic
colleagues overseas, including places where our own undergraduates
have an opportunity to study as part of their programme.
Aesthetica magazine is a York-based
publication run by two York St John graduates. Established in 2003,
it is billed as ‘the UK’s only art publication to view the arts as
an interdisciplinary whole and covers visual art, literature,
music, theatre and film in every issue’. Not only has the magazine
provided placement opportunities for students, the editor, herself
a former student here, has addressed students and staff at
conferences organised at the University with a specific focus on
employability.
Other journalism opportunities have arisen with the local
newspaper, the York Press, and
the Whitby Gazette.
Poem in a Box was a project initiated by students of
York St John University in collaboration with York Art Gallery,
York Theatre Royal,
City
Screen,
York Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and Clifton Without Junior
School, aiming to bring art and poetry to a wider audience in York
by installing digital displays (‘boxes’) at educational and
cultural sites in the city, namely the art gallery, City Screen
independent cinema, the York District Hospital, the Theatre Royal
and Clifton Without Junior School. A team of students selected the
poems for display and invited all students to submit poems to
inspire an artwork or to become part of a digital image.
In collaboration with the
University’s Japan Project Officer,
Tanka: Art and Creative Writing involved collaborative
creativity at several levels: from staff and students working
together, to partnership with organisations, national and
international. The project, which focused on the Japanese
poetic form of tanka, brought together staff from two disciplines
(Creative Writing and Art) who responded to a common stimulus,
promoting dialogue, exchange and a shared undergraduate experience
at Level 2. The Japan Project Officer contributed presentations and
provided expert advice for students, who not only took their
collaboration out of the University, into the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, but
also to Kyoto, Japan. The project culminated in an
international symposium held at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park.