What is writernet?
We are the only people who talk to, or are able to talk to, everyone. We make the time to do it because it our business to. We are referred to by other theatres who advertise our services on their website (including the Bush, Birmingham Rep, Soho Theatre, Paines Plough etc). We are referred to by Literary Managers as an information source for people coming into the industry (script readers, placements, young directors etc). We advise emerging companies on their work with writers (Weaver Hughes, 503), pointing them to sources of new writing beyond their own networks, joining up dots, models of best practice, and explaining the workings of other industry organisations such as the Writers' Guild. We broker relationships between writers and organisations. This advice and guidance is often personalised and informal.
We ask the question, what do you want? This is essential because it empowers people to make choices and take responsibility for their work as an artist, at the very heart of the professional development ideal. It prevents people from cutting corners, it provides structures through which people can manage their careers and their relationships to one another. It provides milestones and touchstones which exist outside of a single institution and its vision. It provides alternatives and creative approaches, the critical 'thinking sideways' which is such an essential component in approach to growth and change. We should live in a theatre climate that strives towards excellence and diversity. One that embraces opportunity of access to training and development, that offers substance to aspiration, but that at the end of the day results in a quality theatre culture which will excite and thrill and inspire generations of audiences to come.
We make links between the professional arts world and the practitioner, articulate and unravel for writers and those who work with them the often coded language of the funding system, point them in unexpected directions, in a simple conversation encourage them to go to a workshop, meet someone, talk, form a peer group: be writers on a life long journey, not just aspire or talk about it. Learn, from one another. Feel part of a culture. Feel knowledge and transmute that knowledge into understanding. Making connections.
We empower people to make choices. Feel confident in their ability to do their best: not necessarily to be the next Harold Pinter: but to strive to be the best they can and to find a home for their skills whether it be a writers group in East London or the Chelsea Physic garden or the Cottesloe stage or the back of a barn in North Cornwall. To find an audience. And to value themselves and their work, and the people they make it for first and foremost. To be independent. To not think, I want to move to Bristol but if I do my career will suffer... To make the right choices and not waste resources, not send things out willy nilly. To understand the industry they wish to write for. To know what it means to write for THEATRE as opposed to TV or film. And for this to be a lifelong support system, which embraces writers at every stage in their career no matter what their former successes. This is not about 'new writing' but all writing.
Sarah Dickenson
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