Institute for the Future of the Book

I spent two years at the Institute for the Future of the Book, researching, editing, producing and marketing multimedia and online content for digital publishing projects such as online reading groups, story apps, online writing communities, digital writing workshops and collaborative writing events. I provided consultancy on schools-based projects and design educational resources.

Proboscis, Literary Platform, Fiction Uncovered

I’ve acted as education consultant for print-on-demand company Proboscis, have co-produced websites for writers and have assisted with web editorial for the Literary Platform and Fiction Uncovered.

Young Poets’ Network

At the Institute for the Future of the Book I collaborated to produce multimedia and text-based features for the Young Poets’ Network, a new online community for budding writers. Director Chris Meade produced some snazzy videos with poets for the Poetry Society YouTube channel. Here’s me talking about some basic ways to use the internet to develop your writings.

Stories to Touch

At if:book, I collaborated to research the possibilities for using digital stories on handheld devices in schools, with a specific focus on language acquisition (EAL and MFL). We worked with Neal Hoskins of Winged Chariot who have designed and built  Stories to Touch, a series of multilingual story apps for use on iPod Touch.  Here’s the worksheet we’ve designed for teachers to use to audit their pupils’ feelings about and experience of foreign languages. We worked with four London-based schools to carry out observations and to talk with the children about digital storytelling. Here’s one of the apps.

Book of Dreams

For World Book Night I stayed up all night in the Hornsey Library, leading Book in a Night, a collaborative writing project with Chris Meade (if:book). I asked library visitors to write descriptions of their recent dreams/nightmares. Some worked individually; most wrote with others. I typed up the descriptions, added images and turned them into an online Book of Dreams.

Amplified Author

Check out this video sweep of Read My Mind, the collaborative writing workshop I ran with artist Ruth Franklin at the Amplified Author conference at the Unlibrary. We asked participants to co-create ‘little books’ on their current preoccupations, e.g. ‘Little Book of Regrets’, ‘Little Book of My Exes’. Here’s the handout. Each book was written by multiple authors on hard copy using art materials. A digital copy of the writings was made available to participants after the event.

Twitter poem

Listen to our ‘Twitter poem’ Homepages. We produced it for if:book on National Poetry Day 2010. It’s a crowdsourced poem on the theme of ‘home for the digital age’. Inspired by some lines supplied by Daljit Nagra (Forward Prize Poetry Winner 2007), users Tweeted us some poetic lines about homepages. We bashed the lines into a poem and recorded at the Unlibrary.

Fiction Uncovered

I assisted Sophie Rochester by doing some light editorial work on the Fiction Uncovered website. The project is all about ‘uncovering’ quality novels that deserve a wider readership. Fiction Uncovered will build a community of readers and publishers who will nominate outstanding novels. The Fiction Uncovered judging panel will earmark eight of the nominated novels for a major publicity and marketing campaign, to be supported by major retailers.

Wonda’s World

I worked on the pilot of if:book‘s interactive storytelling project Wonda’s World. Playing the role of an anonymous writer who is trying to escape a world of words, we published regular installments of an adventure story and invited Year 5 children to develop the plot. The children used blogs to swap storylines and Skyped the author to share their funny stories, poems and character ideas. One year on, I’m working as educational consultant, planning to streamline the project so that it can be rolled out to a greater number of schools and become profitable. Well-known children’s authors will become lead-writers for the project.

Hotbook

The Hotbook is a set of forty literary texts presented as short films, animations and podcasts, for use at KS3. Read my feature on it

My pre-launch online marketing campaign for the Hotbook has resulted in an unexpected volume of interest; hundreds of schools signed up to receive it.

I presented on the Hotbook and Wonda’s World at the if:book salon, with Romesh Gunesekera, at Somerset House.

Print-on-demand

I provided consultancy to creative studio Proboscis. I co-ordinated a case study on the Bookleteer format, wrote an ebook on the use of print-on-demand in schools and co-hosted a workshop for teachers on epublishing.

My e-book has been selected to be one of a dozen titles available on a print-on-demand basis through Proboscis. Prices start at £1.61 per copy.

The Literary Platform

I assisted on editorial for the The Literary Platform, launched in summer 2010. It’s a showcase for projects that experiment with literature and technology.

Fictional Stimulus

What would it be like to belong to an online book club? To test the idea, I took part in if:book’s Fictional Stimulus project. Each week for four weeks myself and the other registered ‘readers’ were emailed links to multimedia versions of literary texts (videos, online games), discussing them on a Ning. I took part in the evaluation nights held in central London pubs, to discuss how the initiative might be scaled up to become profitable – superb fun. Here’s a video ‘sweep’ our face-to-face discussions.

Articles

Bootstrapping for Writers, my article on how new writers should position themselves in readiness for the digital revolution, was featured in Level-4 magazine.

Websites for writers

I spent a year collaborating with efurbishment to produce websites for writers such as Jim Mulligan and John Richmond.

Conferences, festivals

I’m a regular at the quarterly Geek Camps hosted by @peterjlaw at the Free Word Centre and take part in new media events with Future Human as well as Twitter-based literary get-togethers, e.g. the Litweeter Festival. I attend monthly WriteClub London meetings and Future Book socials.