I’ve been hired by the Institute for the Future of the Book to work as their Education Manager on an ongoing basis, I’ve been made Theatre-Director-in-Residence at The Unlibrary, I’m freelancing as a novel-writing coach and setting up a local youth theatre. I’ve received really helpful feedback from colleagues and friends on my draft children’s novel and am now making final edits and tweaks.

I’ve come up with what I reckon is an original idea for a drama course for young people and I’m excited about kicking it off. I’m meeting with contacts at local schools and youth organisations with a view to running some taster workshops and I’m recruiting drama graduates as my assistants.  (By the way, here are a few of the youth productions that I’ve either directed, acted in, choreographed for or produced.)

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Theatre directing: it’s all about looking really intense. You know?..

Meanwhile, the novel-coaching is going great guns! My clients are writing some really imaginative novels about magic spirits, travel adventures, stroppy teenagers and unrequited love; it’s gripping to see the plots develop month by month!

On free evenings I light candles, play relaxing ocean sounds (!) and settle to tweaking my own novel.  I want to publish it as an ebook with embedded multimedia. It’s a project that I’m going to manage myself rather than outsourcing it to a publisher, so a lot of production work lies ahead of me but I can’t wait to roll up my sleeves and do it because it’s such creative work.

At if:book I’m supporting Chris Meade in the development of online content for the Young Poets’ Network, including weekly video/text features on digital publishing topics. This week we ask poets Claire Askew and Andrew McMillan to discuss what makes a good poetry blog. Some of the video interviews that Chris has produced are rather cool. Here’s the wonderful Holly Gramazio, lead games developer at Hide & Seek, talking about interactive literary games.

I’m lucky to have a friend who sources me free tickets to plays and ballets. This month I was blown away by the Diaghilev programme at the ENO and alarmed at the very adult content of The Three Musketeers at a leading UK children’s theatre, The Unicorn. The origami-based play, The Paper Washi Wish (Lyric, Hammersmith) seemed much more child-friendly! At the Queen’s Theatre Hornchurch the Wild West version of The Taming of the Shrew was spot on for the musical-loving local audience, who laughed and groaned and called out. I’ve rarely seen an audience so relaxed and engaged! Totally inspiring! Here’s a bit of the Diaghilev in rehearsal.