Creative Writing Archives | Page 2 of 63 | The Open College of the Arts

Join the new OCA Book Group!

The Book Group is running again! Sign up to have a relaxed discussion about books and writing.

OCA & SANE: A new partnership

We are very pleased to announce that we are working in partnership with the leading mental health charity SANE to support mental health. We are working together to deliver SANE’s new Creative Awards Scheme, a new initiative to enable people suffering from mental health or caring for people with mental health issues to access the visual arts and harness their creativity.

Art in the Anthropocene

The word Anthropocene combines the root “anthropo”, meaning “human” with the root “-cene”, the standard suffix for “epoch” in geologic time. Whilst the term is widely used across many discourses it is important to recognise that the term has spread with great speed often dislodging familiar terms like nature and environment. The notion of the Anthropocene raises important questions that concern the sustainability of the planet to support human life.

Lisbon’s vibrant and optimistic art scene.

If you are heading to Portugal this summer, take some time to look around Lisbon’s vibrant art scene. This is art in the more liberal sense. Music, ceramics, architecture, visual arts, food culture, moving image, textiles- all are on show and in current conversation.

The problems of updating

These days, online books get updated, and customers will get the newest version free of charge. Publishers want their contemporary fiction to be up-to-the-minute. But is there anything you can do to make updates unnecessary? Of course, it depends which genre you choose.

Study event review: Remake / Remodel

It was great to see such liberated and stimulating interplay between students and the work they were making. Unfamiliar drawing methods were explored including drawing with lengths of cane, using coloured tapes to collage with and stitching with a domestic sewing machine to create a variety of textured marks and lines. As the session progressed spontaneous collaborations began to develop between students where one would work over another’s drawing or drawings were developed together to produce an innovative dialogue of marks.

A new leaf: writing and observation

Write a paragraph describing the leaf in as much detail as you can. The only rule is you’re not allowed to use the words ‘green’, ‘red’, ‘yellow’ or ‘brown’.

What I’ve learned from travelling around the world (in short stories)

There’s a whole, diverse world of amazing fiction out there, and exploring it is a lot cheaper than other ways of travelling around the world.

Ekphrastic Poetry

It’s easy to look at a painting, for example, Van Gogh’s yellow bed and chair,, and respond with words. You might write a short story or a narrative poem about someone, possibly Van Gogh himself, who lived here. You might write a poem reproducing what you see in the painting, or something slightly more philosophical about bedrooms and their owners. But what do you write when the painting you are looking at is abstract?

Study event: OCA North

Join the next meeting of OCA North at the Whitworth Gallery in Manchester on the 15 June with OCA tutor Rachel Forster.