Donations are essential to keep Write Out Loud going    

Looking back and looking forward: wishing you all a fulfilling and creative new year

entry picture

With all the carnage and mayhem going on in the world, it might seem pointless to try spreading joy this Christmas/Hanukkah/midwinter festival/just past Diwali. But we are with the people of Paris in wanting to promote business – and pleasure - as usual; in our case, spreading joy in poetry and all the arts. In any case, the UN climate deal is an astonishing achievement that is well worth celebrating, and I hope that even now someone is penning a poem about that to read somewhere soon. .

We believe that we must carry on doing what we do best: creating opportunities for more people to discover the joy of poetry; finding their voice through reading and writing poetry and related work. This helps people to make sense of the world around us, and we intend to carry on as long as we can in supporting all those who help them share their words with each other: event and course organisers, publishers, festivals and individual writers/performers.

Next month sees 10 years since we started the website, 12 since we launched Write Out Loud in the back room of a Bolton pub. We have done all of this almost entirely as a team of volunteers, because of the importance of what we were doing, and because we enjoyed it and could see the good it was doing.

After all that time being helped by a small but dedicated team, supported by our users’ occasional donations and constant enthusiasm, Write Out Loud has become a social enterprise, a community interest company or CIC. It is a halfway house between a charity and a profit-making business. We did this after taking advice, since we do not intend to rely on grants and handouts, but instead plan for a mixed economy of earning money for services, and of receiving grants for specific work.

Our technical wizard Paul Emberson has been busy all year making improvements to the general running of the site, such as boosting page appearance on phones including news, gig guide, galleries and discussions, providing logins via Twitter and Google as well as via Facebook, and updating profiles to allow the inclusion of Twitter feeds.

Organisers  and publishers regularly tell us how much good we do for them, as our gig guide, our reviews of events and books and our poetry journalism help build their audiences/clients.

We were reminded of how much we – and all those people who post events on our guide – help individual poets to find their voice, grow in confidence, and sometimes get published or bookings, earlier this month at our Wigan Write Out Loud night, run for many years by the unflappable (if you don’t believe me, try flapping him) arts impresario John Togher who, for a living, teaches people how to write poetry.  

The Write Out Loud Wigan Christmas special on that Thursday night was embarrassing because so many of the readers/performers made a point of relating what Write Out Loud had done for them, by providing both the Wigan (and all the other) poetry nights, as well as the now-international website. Many had started what has become a part-time career, after finding confidence and their voice by starting out in the old Tudor House hotel (RIP), our Wigan arm.  Hotfoot from her BBC work, en route to her Manchester children’s show, Louise Fazackerley was as mesmeric as ever, and she too started here.

So thank you to all of those who support us in supporting you; and that includes readers and organisers across the world, not least in the United States where poetry gigs are increasingly listed on www.writeoutloud.net.

We make a plea to you this Christmas as ever: if you run a regular event that is on our gig guide, that would fall on a daft day around Christmas – like 25 December -  please click to show it as cancelled. Email gig@writeoutloud.net for any help needed.

All the Write Out Loud team members and event organisers join me in wishing you a peaceful and enjoyable Christmas and a fulfilling and poetic 2016.

 

◄ Wendy French to judge £5,000 Hippocrates prizes

Searching for meaning: an evening of spoken word from prisons ►

Please consider supporting us

Donations from our supporters are essential to keep Write Out Loud going

Comments

Profile image

ken eaton-dykes

Wed 30th Dec 2015 00:02

Thanks Julian and all the team@WOL. You've done wonders for me. Hope you'll be able to cope with extra workload that WOL's snowballing popularity brings during 2016.

Ken.

Profile image

Freda Davis

Tue 29th Dec 2015 21:53

I hope the new year brings new delights and developments for WOL Julian, and that you find all your wishes come true. So glad to see you have become a CIC. Excellent move. Here's to the next ten. I think back very fondly on those sessions in the Hole in the Wall. It all seems a long time ago.

Profile image

Harry O'Neill

Wed 23rd Dec 2015 15:45

A Merry Christmas to all.

And appreciation for the team.

Profile image

Laura Taylor

Wed 23rd Dec 2015 14:30

Thanks Julian, for everything :) All the very best to you and all my fellow poets - live long and prosper ;)

Profile image

Graham Sherwood

Wed 23rd Dec 2015 00:24

Merry Christmas to all members old and new this year. Keep posting and more importantly keep commenting on your fellow members' work. Happy New Year for 2016.

Profile image

M.C. Newberry

Tue 22nd Dec 2015 17:42

Last night, I enjoyed a BAFTA televised tribute to the
widely successful series "Downton Abbey" in which a
tribute was paid to the "crew" behind the enterprise.
Accordingly, it seems entirely fitting to adopt that tribute
to those (the "crew") working to keep WOL up and running.
And how happy the coincidence that the first name of
the creators of each project should be "Julian"!
Congratulations to everyone concerned - and a very Happy
Christmas to you all.

Profile image

Shirley-Anne Kennedy

Tue 22nd Dec 2015 11:58

Merry Christmas Julian & Co.

Merry Christmas one and all x

Profile image

Gus Jonsson

Tue 22nd Dec 2015 11:12

A very Merry Christmas Julian....

Hope to see you soon.

Gus

Profile image

steve pottinger

Mon 21st Dec 2015 17:02

Have a cracking Xmas yourself, Julian. Thanks to you and your team for all your hard work!

If you wish to post a comment you must login.

This site uses cookies. By continuing to browse, you are agreeing to our use of cookies.

Find out more Hide this message