Supporting Academic Writing
WRITESPACE
Academic writing workshops
WRITESPACE
In 2018 and 2019, in my capacity as the Athena SWAN Project Manager at Birmingham City University, I ran a one-off writing event for female academics to coincide with International Women’s Day. I called it WRITESPACE, intending as I did, to provide a protected space for writing, simply by booking out a room and inviting female academics to come and write for a couple of hours, with email and phone switched off. WRITESPACE proved popular.
If finding time and concentration to produce high-quality academic writing pre-COVID was challenging, the additional pressures of the pandemic and lockdown made it doubly or triply so. According to a rapidly expanding literature, female academics were particularly disadvantaged in this respect, due to the burden of homeschooling, household and caring tasks. In 2020, I moved WRITESPACE online, creating a five week structured programme including a Check In/Check Out feature where participants could meet and chat about their writing at the start and end of the sessions.
The online version of WRITESPACE also proved popular, so much so that from July 2020 onwards, it became a twice weekly facilitated, virtual space where female academics from across the university knew they would find others writing. Here’s what participants said about WRITESPACE:
“WRITESPACE has been a revelation to me, supporting my writing but also forcing me to reflect on my own work and writing habits.”
“WRITESPACE has enabled me to protect time for writing in my calendar and to clear my head of any other concerns/deadlines whilst ‘in the room’.”
I have been facilitating online weekly writing ‘spaces’ for female academics at BCU ever since. In recent feedback, participants wrote:
“I have really benefitted from WRITESPACE and the focus it has brought me. Also, writing in a virtual group has leant a sense of community and camaraderie that I think I was missing writing on my own.”
“An invaluable resource.”
