Coastlines
Edward Hogan (The Open University)
For the last few years, writers and researchers in the department of English and Creative Writing at the Open University have been undertaking public engagement work with communities on the UK coast, as part of a project called Coastlines.
Professor Nicola Watson, who devised the project, sources location-specific extracts from the archives – which might be anything from a clifftop poem by Tennyson, to a firsthand account of a shipwreck – and these snippets feed into literary coastal walks offered to the public. After that, our Creative Writing team run workshops with participants, featuring writing activities based around the sensory experience of the walk, as well as the historical sources.
The Coastlines project aims to increase imaginative engagement with the UK coast, and we’ve been privileged to meet writers of all ages. We’ve received poems written on seaside postcards from retirees, and sung sea shanties with schoolchildren on the Isle of Wight. We’ve learned a great deal about coastal life – past and present – from this stimulating exchange of knowledge with writers and readers aged from 8 to 80.
Edward Hogan is Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at The Open University
