MA Dramatic Writing at Drama Centre London at Central Saint Martins Announces THE YEAR OF CELEBRATION

The MA Dramatic Writing at Drama Centre London at Central Saint Martins, one of the UK's leading scriptwriting courses, has announced "The Year of Celebration" for its 5th anniversary year.

The Year of Celebration follows two Years of Experimentation during the first two years of the new course, which explored how best to train writers in the UK, followed by two Years of Dissemination, which have attempted to increase access and diversity in the writing industry via initiatives such as The Student Guide to Writing: Playwriting competition, run with the Bush Theatre and Oberon Books, London Writers Week run with The Writers' Guild of Great Britain, BBC Writersroom, Playwrights' Studio, Scotland, Tamasha, the National Association of Writers in Education and the London Playwrights' Blog, and University Women in the Arts run with Tonic Theatre and the Women of the Future Programme.

As part of The Year of Celebration, the MA Dramatic Writing is appointing 5 new Masters to join the team of Masters, who are industry professionals who have led the way in dramatic writing training in the UK and who advise on and teach the course.

The 5 new Masters include Rob Drummer, Artistic Director of Boundless Theatre, Lisa Goldman, former Artistic Director of the Soho Theatre and author of "The No Rules Handbook for Writers" and Marion Nancarrow, BBC Radio Drama Executive Producer who runs the International Radio Playwriting Competition.

They join current Masters John Yorke, founder of the BBC Writers Academy, former Head of Channel 4 Drama, former Controller of BBC Drama Productions and Managing Director of Angel Station Productions: Kate Rowland, founder of BBC Writersroom and the former Creative Director of New Writing at the BBC; Ola Animashawun, founder of The Royal Court Theatre's young writers programme; Philip Shelley, who runs Channel 4's screenwriting course; Steve Winter, Director of the Kevin Spacey Foundation and the former Director of Old Vic New Voices; Stephen Jeffreys, Literary Associate at The Royal Court Theatre for 11 years whose Playwriting Masterclasses have led the way in the UK; David Edgar, founder of the UK's first postgraduate course in Playwriting; Lucy Kerbel, Director of Tonic Theatre; Caroline Jester, who has been Dramaturg at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre and author of the book "Playwriting Across the Curriculum"; and Nina Steiger, Senior Dramaturg at the National Theatre.

Jennifer Tuckett, Course Leader of the MA Dramatic Writing at Drama Centre London at Central Saint Martins, said: "We are delighted to be appointing 5 new Masters who have led the way in training dramatic writers in the UK. Our Masters advise and teach the course and it has been a privilege to work with them over the last four years to explore how best to train writers in the UK, and it is exciting to be coming to the end of our five year plan for the new course with The Year of Celebration. If writing is a chance to reflect on who we were, who we are and who we can be, it is important we train our writers well and that anyone feels they can be a part of this career path and the voices who are being heard, and it has been a privilege to explore how best we can do this over the first five years of the course".

Other initiatives during The Year of Celebration will include the launch of the National Student Writing Awards, a new award to showcase the best writing coming out of university creative writing courses in the UK.

The course has also just published its first book in a new partnership with Oberon Books to provide access to the leading training coming out of industry writing training programmes which has never been published before and is currently running a petition to reinstate the A Level Creative Writing which is due to come to an end this year and a survey on the future of Dramatic Writing Training. More about these initiatives can be seen here: https://oberonbooks.wordpress.com/2017/02/07/the-masters-at-work/

For more information on the MA Dramatic Writing please go to: http://www.arts.ac.uk/csm/courses/postgraduate/ma-dramatic-writing-drama-centre-london/

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