Teaching

I have taught script-editing and creative writing for organisations including the Skriva Writing School, National Galleries of Scotland and the Edinburgh International Festival.

Skriva Writing School
I provided script-editor input for two courses in 2015/16 and 2016/17 helping adults to create a TV Pilot script.

National Galleries of Scotland
I have led courses and workshops for adults and children including: Illustration and Text with artist, Audrey Grant and Jonathan Gibbs, Head of Illustration at Edinburgh College of Art; Introduction to Art Criticism, with contributions from writer and journalist, Susan Mansfield of The Scotsman; creative writing workshops for primary and secondary school groups to accompany the annual Inspired! Get Writing competition; and one-day creative writing courses for adults to accompany exhibitions including ‘John Bellany: A Passion for Life’, ‘Van Gogh to Kandinsky: Symbolist Landscape in Europe 1880-1910’, and ‘Edvard Munch: Graphic Works from the Gundersen Collection’.

Edinburgh International Festival
From 2010-2014 I was Writer-in-Residence at the Royal High School in Edinburgh, running creative writing courses for S4, S5 and S6 pupils as part of the Festival’s year-round education programme.

Themes that underpinned our work included: a look at war using Guillaume Apollinaire’s WW1 calligrammes; Samuel Beckett and the creative use of technology in writing; experiments with form through the lens of writers from Asia and the Far East; and short fiction with a post-colonial theme. The latter culminated in two publications of student work, Triangle 1 and Triangle 2 and a festival exhibition at The Hub in Edinburgh.

I also led Folding Words, a letter writing project for primary schools, culminating in an exhibition at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Edinburgh.

Other
In 2019 I led workshops for students at Firhill High School in Edinburgh on behalf of Art UK and its Masterpieces in School programme. This involved producing writing inspired by the Scottish Book Sculpture based on Ian Rankin’s novel, Exit Music.

In 2015 I worked with S1 pupils from the Royal High School in Edinburgh to complement work they were doing on A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness, culminating in a mini (monster) Book Festival .

As part of the Edinburgh University Open Studies Summer Programme in 2013 I led a short course for adults – Artefacts: the Power of Objects to Inspire. The Course is a poem written by participant Gill Green about her experience of the sessions.

I ran a literary tour and treasure hunt on behalf of Biggar Museums Trust to accompany my residency at Brownsbank Cottage in 2012 – the last home of poet Hugh MacDiarmid and his wife Valda.

I undertook Book Doctor ‘surgeries’ at the Wigtown International Book Festival in 2010 and 2011.

In 2010 I took part in the Scottish Book Trust’s Writers in Schools programme – a three-week course on creating and improving short fiction for S3 pupils at Inveralmond High School, Livingston. This culminated in a Book Festival, a publication, Outbreak! and a presentation to teachers at the conference, ‘Artists and A Curriculum for Excellence’ in Glasgow.