The write stuff W


hen Brighton-based estate agent Bonett’s worked with a poet to develop a more creative approach to language, the media


had a field day. Both Radio Four and Radio Five featured items lampooning the idea that poetry had anything to offer estate agents. Creative writing, it was suggested, was for leisure not for the workplace. Yet, evidence emerging from a new project launched by New Writing South demonstrates the opposite: developing a more imaginative approach to language can equip workers and organisations with essential skills needed in a fast-changing global economy. Owner Paul Bonett explains: ‘The reason


we did it was to have a different approach to using language, not to tread the same tired old path. Language is an important tool and doesn’t get the respect it deserves. Most people’s first contact with us is through language: websites, email, property adverts, but it is always an afterthought. If you use language differently you think differently and you interact with people in a different way. You breathe new life into the business. It is creative innovation.’


Writing styles Bonett’s staff worked with Paul Lyalls, a performance poet, who encouraged part- icipants to rethink their writing styles. ‘I was trying to get people to approach language more creatively,’ he says. ‘To begin with, I got people to write a poem about an important moment in their lives.’ Once confident, participants visited a house on Bonett’s list and applied the techniques to describing the property. An immediate outcome was the appearance of property adverts in the form of haiku:


Golden Autumn grove Shading tidy city pad Walk into Brighton


Improved written communication was only one of the benefits from the course. ‘It made people look at their own potential and each other’s potential in a different light,’ says Lyalls. Another Brighton-based company, People Who Do, which specialises in improving organisational performance, also found this


12 ADULTS LEARNING JANUARY 2011


to be the case. Co-owners Steve Shark and Curtis James worked with playwright Helen Nelder. ‘We wanted to do some work on our own narrative, to develop our own creativity and develop tools to use with our clients,’ says Shark.


Nelder worked with the team on their own biographies, writing them first from their own standpoint, then from another viewpoint. ‘This develops understanding, creates perspective and empowers people to develop empathy,’ says Nelder. For Shark, this approach enabled the team to discover personal strengths they had previously considered of little value to business and examine them in a different light:


It was about bringing the personal into the professional, identifying skills and attitudes we had withheld from our professional life, from the way we work with clients, realising that they were important, unique, and should be pushed upfront to show who we are.


Writers at Work was set up by New Writing South (NWS), an organisation funded by South East Arts, to support and develop markets for writers. Their Creative Learning Team has been placing professional writers in schools, colleges and voluntary organisations for over seven years. Anna Jefferson, Creative Learning Manager, says the project was born out of evaluations from the Creative Learning Team’s work which demonstrated working with writers promoted creative thinking, confidence, public speaking, communication skills and team-building abilities. ‘We realised that magical things were coming through as well as writing skills and thought this could work well in a business context.’ Unlike other projects run by NWS, Writers at Work is totally self-funded. ‘It is about exploring how we use language, a shift in communication, giving organisations a creative injection, whether that is a one-off or over a longer term,’ says Jefferson. As a relatively new project, the focus so


far has been on collecting data to measure individual benefits rather than assessing organisational gains. Paul Bonett expects the intervention to result in greater productivity,


The use of creative writing in work environments is easy to mock but there is a strong case for creative learning at work, with clear dividends for both staff and employers, writes CHRISTINA SANDERS


but believes the business argument is as much about people as profit. ‘I think it will result in more clients putting their houses on the market with us. It is about staff development and organisational development. You could go paintballing but once you’ve done that it’s over. This changes the way you think about the world and that won’t go away in 10 or even 20 years time.’


Measuring productivity According to Steve Shark, measuring prod- uctivity is critical in assessing the impact of creative learning in the workplace. ‘Creativity is to do with personal fulfilment and employment. What makes people tick, whether they are happy at work. We look at people processing tasks and productivity. We measure against a list of before and after and it teaches us a great deal about productivity, stress levels, how people engage in various aspects of work and where they see the benefits.’ Introducing new creative ideas doesn’t change the workplace instantly, but, over a longer period, Shark says, he and his colleagues see techniques such as those used by Writers at Work integrated into organisations and have evidence that productivity improves. In a workplace increasingly dominated by


‘hard skills’ training, early lessons emerging from the project make a strong case for more creative learning at work. A more imaginative approach to writing appears to engage people, enabling them to tap into a rich well of personal experience and abilities which has dividends for employers in terms of staff who can think more creatively. Shark is one of many employers who see these skills as critical to businesses success, or even survival, in the future: ‘While we may not be able to compete on price and manufacturing, we can compete on soft skills, on ideas. We can teach people creative skills to help them solve problems and give people confidence in their abilities to develop ideas out of thin air.’


Christina Sanders is a Tutor Organiser for the Worker’s Educational Association. For more information about the Writers at


Work project, contact New Writing South, 9 Jew Street, Brighton BN1 1UT. Tel: 01273 735353: www.newwritingsouth.com.


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32