A New Year…

2010 promises to be another exciting year for Midland Creative Projects Limited. Jonathan Davidson will be spending a good portion of his time as Chief Executive of the newly formed Writing West Midlands (the Literature Development Agency for the West Midlands) while Sara Beadle will take full responsibility for the Birmingham Book Festival, one of our most important clients. We will be ably supported by Joanne Penn, who started as Administrative Assistant in August 2009 and is now a valued member of our team.

Other ongoing work includes finishing a piece of consultancy for Essex County Council on the future development of the Essex Book Festival, developing new ways forward for the innovative West Midlands Readers’ Network and a fundraising project for Swindon Festival of Literature. We will also continue to work with The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, particularly on developing the Stratford Poetry Festival and hopefully on a new Poetry Performer in Residence project (a funding bid has just been submitted in partnership with Warwickshire, Solihull and Coventry public library services). Our work for the Go Dutch! project will continue, with a new season of events and further distribution of the Go Dutch! sampler of new Dutch writing.

Both Jonathan and Sara will be criss-crossing the country in the first few months of 2010. As well as the weekly trips to London for various project meetings, Jonathan will be attending a first meeting of a new network of Directors of Regional Literature/Writer Development Agencies in Leeds in February and the third Lit-Up Conference in Bristol, also in February. Sara will be visiting New Writing North in January, in particular to talk about how they manage the Durham Book Festival, and has various trips to London planned to meet publishers in preparation for our first Festival in a Day on Saturday 29th May and our main Birmingham Book Festival in October.

So, we are very busy, but, of course, always interested in interesting pieces of new work…

Happy New Year!