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Lookup NU author(s): Jake Morris-Campbell, Professor James Annesley
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
Focussing on the work of New Writing North (NWN), England’s largest writing development agency (RWDA), this paper starts by looking to understand the role bodies like NWN play in the making of contemporary writing. With an emphasis on the projects, events, commissions and competitions delivered by NWN, the initial aim is to illuminate the operation of bodies that though influential, are often overlooked in critical studies of what Mark McGurl calls ‘the institutional ground of contemporary literary production’. Having introduced some of NWN’s programmes, the paper then turns to the suggestion, one drawn from Sarah Brouillette’s critique of UNESCO Cities of Literature, that organisations like NWN deploy literary culture as a resource in the service of instrumental, economistic goals. It also considers the role RWDAs play in the cultural industries and the extent they might been seen to be offering a positivistic view of the profession of writing, one that obscures the precarity of the work and the modest financial rewards. Having established these positions, the paper qualifies them by arguing that rather than simply cheerleading for the creative industries or seeking to deliver a range of extrinsic benefits, an organisation like NWN is actually involved in negotiating various policy agendas and funding contexts in the service of nourishing an enabling literary ecology. Culture industries discourse is, the paper suggests, just one of the many competing agendas in play, part of a complex mix of relationships that RWDAs must balance so as to address the needs of the community of writers they represent. Inevitably there are compromises, but as this paper makes clear, those compromises are made, not to progress instrumental goals, but rather to better support creativity and increase opportunity. The argument is that it’s NWN’s ability to successfully navigate the competing pressures of this production context that gives it its central role in the North East’s literary ecology.
Author(s): Morris-Campbell J, Annesley J
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Creative Industries Journal
Year: 2025
Pages: epub ahead of print
Online publication date: 19/06/2025
Acceptance date: 27/05/2025
Date deposited: 28/05/2025
ISSN (print): 1751-0694
ISSN (electronic): 1751-0708
Publisher: Routledge
URL: https://doi.org/10.1080/17510694.2025.2515335
DOI: 10.1080/17510694.2025.2515335
ePrints DOI: 10.57711/k5rx-n233
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