Writing groups and workshops : Hackney Libraries

As part of this programme professional writers run a continuing series of writing groups across all of Hackney’s libraries. Two of these have been long-standing groups, another four were added more recently and have been running for about nine months. Some of these groups focus specifically on attracting Black women or African writers, others target a broader participant group, and one of them is a monthly Comic Creators Club for children and young people, delivered by comic artist Lily Ash Sakula to support creativity, literacy and visual literacy. A library staff member speaks about the success of these writing groups: “Nine months on, they’ve got these really fantastic little networks of people that have attached themselves to each group, and they’re growing really organically into the supportive writing environment that those creatives coming together have created for themselves.”