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As a prize-winning poet, novelist and teacher of Creative Writing, Professor Philip Gross's work is concerned with the development of individuals' creative practice (both adults' and children's), outside the academy as well as inside it. His work has led to a wider awareness of the ways in which creative process, particularly through cross-arts collaboration, can enhance our understanding of some of the most urgent challenges of contemporary society. Offering models of peace-building and communication in an age of cultural diversity and migration, it encompasses creative ways of envisioning the environment as well as human issues of dispossession, health and ageing.
The impact of Professor Nigel McLoughlin's work has two main, interrelated facets. The first is the public dissemination of his poetry through a variety of media, including mass media. His work takes the Irish troubles as a main context, and addresses themes of violence, invasion, identity, belonging, and tradition. He has published widely and has been invited to perform his work to public audiences at numerous literary festivals. The second is his academic research into pedagogy and poetics. Here his academic work examines the creative process and principles of making poems and his research reflects how one can explore and teach the various textual, musical, rhythmic, formal and thematic considerations of poetry. His own poetry bears out this reflective relation to expressivity through its perpetual experiments with formal and musical considerations, imagery and the relationship of the poetic whole to multi-sensory images and embodied thought.
The Military Writing Network (MWN) was founded in 2009 by Siobhan Campbell, Principal Lecturer in the Department of English Literature and Creative Writing, Kingston University London. Drawing on research by Professor Rachel Cusk, Dr. Meg Jensen and Professor Vesna Goldsworthy into the interface between testimony, trauma literature, autobiographical fiction and recovery from trauma and related disorders, the MWN created and sustains partnerships with organisations working with veteran soldiers, sailors and airmen and their families toward investigating how creative writing practice can help them cope with issues relating to combat stress, both inside and outside mental health environments.
This case study describes the impact of two poetry collections authored by Dr Abi Curtis, Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing and English Literature. The research explored and disseminated in two journal articles is intrinsically linked to the two poetry collections, which are practice-based explorations of an ongoing body of research. The research conducted in the two academic articles has had a direct impact on the practice-based work — the two poetry collections. These, in turn, have had impacts on the reading public, other artists, and students in different disciplines.
Members of the University of Exeter's Programme for Creative Writing and Arts have translated their research-as-practice into regional, national, and international impact by introducing innovative forms of contemporary writing to a range of audiences through publications, several of which have had notable public acclaim; an events programme; and training workshops. Funded projects to develop new writing have strengthened relationships between academic and creative sectors and inspired new and successful writing careers. The main impacts of this research-as-practice have been to:
Gunn is a writer of fiction, with works published by commercial literary presses and substantial sales to a general readership. The research constitutes an experiment with artistic form, reworking modernist techniques and themes, such as bricolage, the imitation of musical form and the feminist revaluation of domestic experiences and objects. The underlying research question is: how can the technical resources and cultural preoccupations of modernist literary experiment be deployed to engage and inform a 21st-century reading public?
Gunn's research is communicated to the public through book sales, interviews, readings, and articles in the broadcast and print media, and through the Dundee Literary Festival. These activities enhance public understanding of the creative process for the wider community, providing cultural enrichment and economic benefit at the level of the local, national and international.
The present case study describes the considerable influence over time of a core team of creative writers at the University of East Anglia (UEA) on the practice of creative writing as a discipline, both within the academy and beyond, and on the landscape of contemporary literature, the novel in particular. Our practice-based research and pedagogy represents a considerable contribution to economic prosperity in the publishing industries. UEA creative writing has local, national and international cultural impact through its partnership with the Writers Centre, Norwich and its extensive presence in the media, and through links with workshops in India, Australia and America. The transformative influence of UEA on the character of creative writing was recognized in 2012 with the award of the Queen's Anniversary Prize.
Tessa Hadley's, novels and stories have reached a public audience, been listed for prizes, and led to prominent literary journalism, public debate, and appointments to prize-awarding panels. Hadley's work is an example of the cultural and economic impact of the Creative Writing research community at BSU, which includes novelists, poets, dramatists and non-fiction writers, who have reached public audiences, contributed to public literary culture through journalism, broadcasting and award-judging, and contributed to the economic viability of publishing and related industries. Hadley exemplifies the strategy of using the research base to enhance the quality of published creative writing and literary debate.
The case study will discuss, and provide qualitative evidence of the ways in which Julie Maclusky's action research into developing approaches to teaching creative writing in primary schools has contributed to the thinking, training and continuing professional development of primary school teachers and their teaching practice. It will illustrate the emerging impact that the research has had on the practices of primary schools in teaching creative writing and on the value and success of those practices to developing articulacy and literacy amongst primary school-aged children.
Paul Farley's book Edgelands, co-authored with Michael Symmons Roberts, has changed attitudes to landscape in both cultural and utilitarian senses. Winner of the `Foyles Best Book of Ideas' Prize for 2012, Edgelands was extensively reviewed upon publication and its capacity for changing perceptions was widely remarked upon. Beyond its print and digital dissemination, it became a broadcast topic, both as an adaptation for BBC Radio 4's Book of the Week and also as a news feature on programmes such as BBC Radio 4's The Today Programme. As well as becoming a set text on many academic reading lists, Edgelands has influenced curatorial practice in the visual arts, opinion and policymaking bodies, practical approaches to engagement with landscape and also promoted widespread debate and active awareness at the grass roots level of weblogs and online journals. The book is part of a much wider body of research and writing on cognate subjects by Farley that includes award-winning collections of poetry and high-profile radio broadcasts. However, Edgelands is focused upon here as a concrete example of how a single publication can have a significant and wide-ranging impact.