Newcastle Cultural Development Fund announces £90,000 investment in New Writing North projects
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New Writing North is delighted to be included today in the list of organisations receiving funding from the inaugural Newcastle Culture Development Fund at the Community Foundation Tyne & Wear and Northumberland.
New Writing North has been awarded £90,000 of funding over three years to support the Cuckoo Young Writers programme in Newcastle. The funding will be used to deliver creative writing activity in key Newcastle wards, young people-led creative projects, and literary events programmed by and for young people under the brand ‘Young Writers’ City’.
The Cuckoo Young Writers programme is unique as it provides talent development, publishing, and outreach opportunities for young people interested in writing across all forms. At its core, the programme consists of a network of young writers’ groups led by professional writers which meet fortnightly in Newcastle (with other groups meeting in Cramlington, Sunderland and Alnwick). Other key elements of the Cuckoo Young Writers programme are www.cuckooquarterly.com, a literary magazine for young writers; www.cuckooreview.com, a cultural journalism site involving young people writing about culture in the North East; and Cuckoo Press, a print magazine published twice a year which is distributed as a pullout with NARC. magazine and to schools and community groups throughout the North East.
The increased funding from the Newcastle Culture Development Fund will allow New Writing North to increase the breadth and reach of the Cuckoo Young Writers programme, including working more with schools, libraries and community organisations to run after-school writing groups and outreach projects in harder-to-reach communities. We will also create more opportunities for the young writers’ work to be seen and celebrated with events and projects with theatres and other cultural venues across Newcastle.
We look forward to announcing more exciting developments for the Cuckoo Young Writers programme in due course.