Ideal for Nottingham Trent University Students, WRAP is a Creative Writing Workshop Held at Blend Contemporary

WRAP, standing for Writing, Reading and Pleasure, is a creative programme that aims to give students at Nottingham Trent University the opportunity to think creatively, and use their left brain. Rebecca Cullen set the project up to help students find their voice and boost their confidence. Open to all pupils across the university, pieces produced vary considerably. Nonetheless, its impact on boosting students’ confidence is shared by all.

The creative writing workshops, held on a Wednesday afternoon, are drop-in sessions where students are able to bring in their work to discuss and gain feedback on. These can range from poetry, to nonfiction, to life writing. Thursday evening is centred around a theme, which stretches writers to think creatively inside one area they may not commonly touch upon. Plus, alongside weekly sessions, WRAP also hosts featured writers’ workshops, café meetups, and a Notts TV Book Club. All these events are intertwined in some way. For example, last month's featured writer, Emily Pine, was also the author of the chosen book for one week's theme on a Thursday. The idea was for students to centre a piece around her book, Notes To Self, where they would have to use prompts and involve the idea of musical notes in their writing. 

Emily was a particularly inspiring writer to hear from, according to Rebecca. She is a master of life writing and gave a class on her literary inspirations. She asked participants to write about a meeting with somebody in their own lives and discuss how they felt about the meeting, challenging students to write in different tenses and formats. She stressed the importance of freedom in one’s own writing and being honest about personal experiences. To speak about feelings and experiences is an extremely brave thing to do, and Emily stresses that you shouldn’t want to do it for anyone else but you. She gave some incredible advice on being able to “read and write your way into courage”, and to create and reshape endings that you’re happy with. 

Rebecca speaks on the importance of life writing as a form of expressing yourself in a way left usually unexplored. She notes very few people have ever said to students, “I believe in you to write that, if that’s what is important to you.” She also recognises the incredibly raw and tough real life stories people are worried to share. For example, she recently had a writer come in, who gained the confidence to open up about past trauma and challenging circumstances. Instead of avoiding it, she wrote about it, and that’s what’s great about the programme - people are able to be unequivocally, authentically, themselves. 

Alongside writing events, there is the reading side. WRAP hosts monthly book groups where people can bring what they’ve been reading, or choose sections of books they’ve focused on as a group. They pride themselves on being purposefully representative, meaning all workshops will always include texts written by people of colour and women. The significance of this was shown through the International Women’s Day event, where people struggled to easily find poems written by women from their home countries, to bring along and discuss. By WRAP purposefully representing these often marginalised groups in literature, they are inspiring the next generation in a more inclusive way. 

Finishing our chat, Rebecca’s biggest piece of advice for aspiring writers is to just ask the questions, make the connections, and go for it. WRAP gives you the confidence to do that and to think more creatively than you might have done before. So, if you feel like you want to broaden your reading and writing, pop along to some of the workshops, or a Blend café event, and begin your creative journey. 

The next public WRAP event will take place on Thursday 18 May at Blend Contemporary

ntu.ac.uk/wrap