Contact Relay at: abby @ blinkmedia.org
Relay is a social media writing project created by Blink in partnership with Leeds Library and Information Services. The project has received funding from the MLA (through the Their Past Your Future2 programme) to join two groups of people to share experiences, ideas and stories and reflect on what has contributed to shaping our identity.
Working with author Ray French, Relay participants will use creative writing to reflect on their own identity and to find out more about the experiences of other people taking part in the project.
For most of the project the two Relay groups will meet separately and will exchange their written work online and on paper (like a relay).
The Relay blog will play an important role in allowing participants to access each others work and to share images of photographs and objects they have chosen to illustrate their words.
The project will be divided into two phases. The first phase will be to generate material about personal memories and life stories. The second phase will be a chance for the groups to exchange and respond to each others work and to consider identity from a different cultural perspective. There will be opportunities for the two groups to work together at combined workshops in Central Library and also at Leeds Discovery Centre.
At the end of the project we will produce a small exhibition of the groups’ work that will be launched as part of I Love West Leeds Festival and then toured around Leeds Libraries.
Relay’s participants are from the Time Together refugee project and Calverley/Pudsey Writers Group.
Time Together is a national initiative that matches refugees with mentors to help people form connections and feel at home in the wider community. The Leeds branch of Time Together is co-ordinated by Bronwyn Brady from Leeds Library and Information Service and is keen to make the most of the ‘multitude of skills and knowledge’ that refugees bring to the community.
Librarian Kit Lardner describes the Pudsey and Calverley Writing Groups as:
“legendary siblings, the true origins of which are a little hazy… Some say that the Pudsey group is the older of the two, but that is not to say that the Calverley group is the runt of the litter. Oh no, sir. Both groups are made up of non-professional writers. Their main aim is to write for enjoyment.
This they do with aplomb.
Each group meets regularly at the respective libraries, and write across genres and styles. One aspect both groups share is a willingness to try something new and a keenness to share experiences through the medium of creative writing.”
