NWP teachers’ writing workshop: Whitechapel detectives - 21 Nov 2019
The Whitechapel Gallery, 5-7 pm Thursday 21 November 2019
Whitechapel: Kirsty Lowry. NWP: Jeni Smith and Simon Wrigley.
This workshop accompanies the exhibition Empty House of the Stare
Tom McCarthy takes his title for this exhibition from a Yeats’ poem, Meditations in Time of Civil War. Yeats was writing in 1922 when the Irish were struggling for independence from the British - but of course, there are connections to our times and lives too. One writing challenge for us is to find those personal and cultural resonances. In his writing, Tom McCarthy hears echoes of Shelley’s ‘Ozymandias’ (1818) in Sophie Ristelhueber’s Fait # 60. He invites us to find our own (2019) connections and conversations, literary or not, between the artworks that he has selected. As he writes:
I like this blurring between books and architecture, the notion that both are part of the same edifice of knowledge-incubation.’
‘In the Stacks’ (part 3 of ‘Empty House of the Stare’)
This workshop draws on one of the meanings of ‘stare’ by inviting writing teachers to glimpse, observe, connect, write, and share thoughts.
- Take a few minutes to write down words and phrases that you associate with observation – with looking and being looked at. We will share some of these by reading around the group.
- Choose one of your ideas and free-write for a few minutes. This writing will not be shared, but may inform what comes next.
- Receive your notebook and your clue before you set off as a ‘detective’ to the exhibition.
- Visit the gallery – look, talk, find connections, make notes.
- Return to the classroom and write.
- Now we will share our thoughts and writing. We will discuss the process and how we might use similar approaches in the classroom – and why.
- We will consider how NWP teachers’ writing groups support professional development and well-being.