Associates
Free Word's network of associates includes individuals, groups and organisations working across the fields of literature, culture, politics and free expression, and the arts.
- 26
- Amphora Arts
- The Asian Word
- The British Centre for Literary Translation
- Culture+Conflict
- Fiction Uncovered
- Firefly International
- Give a Book
- if:book uk
- Inpress
- The Literary Platform
- Literature Across Frontiers
- London Slam Central
- The Manifesto Club
- The Muswell Press
- A New Direction
- PalFest
- Poetry Translation Centre
- Pop Up
- RAW
- Readers International
- Spread the Word
- The National Academy of Writing
- Vivarta
- Wanderer Apps
- Writers’ Centre Norwich
- The Writers’ Guild of Great Britain
All our associates our listed on the left. Click on their names to find out more.
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26
Members of 26 work in all areas of the media and collaborate to raise the profile and value of words in business and everyday life. Projects include 26 Exchanges with International PEN, From Here to Here with London Underground, 26 Treasures with the V&A, The Bard & Co with Shakespeare’s Globe, Common Ground funded by the Arts Council, and WORDSTOCK - a word festival held at the Free Word Centre.
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Amphora Arts
Amphora Arts is a production company specialising in literature and the arts, with a track record of producing quality events with a fresh cultural focus. We’re passionate about projects which bring literature and the arts to new audiences - whether via live events, online or through digital, and into diverse communities: to teach, inspire, and to offer a new approach. Our work has been seen at many iconic and artistic venues across London including the British Library, Shakespeare's Globe, Bush Theatre, British Museum, Stationers' Hall and Kings Place and in dozens of the capital’s schools through our educational outreach programme. The company also has a growing involvement in branding and web development.
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The Asian Word
The Asian Word curates and produces live events, series and festivals with a focus on writing about Asia, from the Eastern Mediterranean to the Pacific and from the developing world.
We bring the genre of world literature to the British public to promote discussion of key issues, foster the understanding of international communities in Britain and introduce new, world writing to the UK audience.
With a solid background in marketing and audience development, we structure our programmes to provide the greatest audience impact and participation.
The Asian Word founded and directs the Festival of Asian Literature, held annually at Asia House. FAL is the only festival in the UK dedicated to writing from or about the broad expanse of the Asian continent. In conjunction with that festival, we produce outreach programmes in libraries, schools and colleges, mentoring young writers and journalists.
The Asian Word also creates events for museums, galleries, theatre groups entertainment venues and other literature festivals and programmes.
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The British Centre for Literary Translation
The British Centre for Literary Translation (BCLT) is Britain's leading centre for the development, promotion and support of literary translation.
Working closely with regional, national and international partners (including the Translators Association and English PEN), BCLT offers support and continuing professional development to literary translators at all stages of their career; provides information and advice; stimulates public awareness and interest in literary translation, develops new audiences through events and publications; and generates and encourages academic debate.
Founded in 1989 by the late W G 'Max' Sebald, BCLT is based at the University of East Anglia and supported by Arts Council England.
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Culture+Conflict
Culture+Conflict is an ambitious new venture – independent, interdisciplinary, international and intercultural – to explore and amplify the distinctive role of culture in conflict and post-conflict contexts.
The aim is to support artists, writers and cultural practitioners working in these contexts by promoting and amplifying their work to international audiences, including policy-makers, politicians and diplomats. They act as a broker to connect people and build networks, and run a programme that includes events, research, workshops and projects. -
Fiction Uncovered
Fiction Uncovered is a promotion to support the UK’s best fiction writers – those writers who deserve wider recognition. The promotion is supported by Arts Council England and funded by the National Lottery. Retailers including Waterstones, Foyles, iBookstore, Amazon and The Book Depository support the promotion. It also works in partnership with The Reading Agency to reach libraries and reading groups, and with Lovereading UK.
Fiction Uncovered also hosts a community website, which offers the eight selected writers – and an even broader group of writers through recommendation and endorsement – a chance to reach wider audiences.
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Firefly International
Firefly International works to overcome boundaries worldwide through friendship, education and the arts. Our projects include Svitac, a youth centre offering arts and cultural activities for all young people in the isolated town of Brcko, Bosnia, and Reel Festivals. Reel Festivals have been held in the UK and around the world since 2008. The project is based on the idea tha art and culture are the best way to break down barriers and increase communication between people. Previous events have focused on Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan, with poetry, music and film events.
fireflyinternational.org
info@fireflyinternational.org
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Give a Book
Give a Book is a charity that gives books to a wide range of people at a time when they really need one: the books go to disadvantaged children through certain schools and other charities, to prison reading groups, the isolated elderly and people affected by cancer. Every £5.00 donation gives a book.
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if:book uk
if:book uk is a think and do tank exploring the future of the book, founded in 2007 linked to Institute for the Future of the Book in New York, if:book Australia and if:lire, Paris. Projects include curating the book How Power Corrupts by Ricardo Blaug at the Free Word; setting up The Unlibrary Cafe, a hub for community digital publishing; creating innovative resources for schools; research with publishers Winged Chariot, developing the Young Poets Network, and co-ordinating the ifsoflo network promoting digital possibilities for literature organisations.
Director Chris Meade speaks at conferences and events around the UK and the world. -
Inpress
Inpress is the UK’s specialist in selling books produced by independent publishers. We support innovative, literary publishers across the UK and Ireland, delivering their fiction, poetry and non-fiction to book lovers worldwide. Inpress brings beautiful, painstakingly-created, innovative and outside-of-the-mainstream books together in one place, selling to the book trade and direct to customers through www.inpressbooks.co.uk. We currently work in partnership with over 40 publishers, providing sales and distribution alongside complementary publisher services such as social media marketing, professional development and events.
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The Literary Platform
The Literary Platform is dedicated to finding out about the best projects experimenting with literature and technology. It brings together comment from industry figures and key thinkers, serving to showcase the range of creative literary initiatives both inside and outside the book publishing industry. The Literary Platform also offers consultancy, curation and communications services to publishers, literary organisations and authors. Clients include the FutureBook Innovation Workshop, O’Reilly’s Tools of Change conferences, the Frankfurt Book Fair, Pan Macmillan and Simon and Schuster. It is part of a working group at NESTA looking at the impact of digital on SME publishers.
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Literature Across Frontiers
Literature Across Frontiers (LAF) fosters cross-cultural dialogue and international literary exchange, and operates in partnership with a network of organisations with the aim to encourage greater diversity in literary publishing and programming; develop audiences for translated literature; and to act as a catalyst for international collaborations and interdisciplinary projects that create opportunities for writers, translators, publishers and literary organizations, bring literature into interaction with other art forms and explore the social and political role of writing.
LAF is based at the Mercator Institute for Media, Languages and Culture at Aberystwyth University in Wales and is supported by the Culture Programme of the EU.
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London Slam Central
London Slam Central programmes events that draw on literature and ideas – and, often, an element of advocacy in their conception. Launched in 2003, some of its best known initiatives include aromapoetry, which provided a launch platform for emerging writers such as Heather Taylor and Inua Ellams; Bringing the House Down, created for the National Theatre’s Art of Regeneration initiative, which was the first theatre-based poetry feature show in the UK; Outdooring, an event that gave novelists a space to read unpublished novels in while engaging with the public, where the likes of Hisham Matar, Chris Cleave and Ben Markovits unveiled new work; and the African Writers' Evening, which now runs at the Southbank Centre. Our most recent events are the Caribbean Literary Salon and African Book Festival, developed in partnership with the Free Word Centre.
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The Manifesto Club
The Manifesto Club campaigns against the hyperregulation of everyday life. They support free movement across borders, free expression and free association. They challenge booze bans, photo bans, vetting and speech codes - all new ways in which the state regulates everyday life on the streets, in workplaces and in people’s private lives. They believe that the freedom issues of the twenty-first century cut across old political boundaries, and require new schools of political thought, and new methods of campaigning and organisation. Their rapidly growing membership hails from all political traditions and none, and from all corners of the world.
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The Muswell Press
The Muswell Press seeks to publish good writers – new or established – who may be overlooked by current agent/publisher systems. They produce high quality, well designed and edited printed books and eBooks on a wide range of subjects: fiction, poetry, science and art. Their eBooks are distributed by Faber & Faber, and Bloomsbury Publishing have included them in their eBook public library initiative. If their manuscript is accepted, Muswell Press authors enter a unique collaboration between editor, publisher, printer and designer. They also run ‘Muswell Press In Performance’ events in bookshops to promote their authors.
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A New Direction
A New Direction connects children, young people and education with the best of arts and culture in London.
It campaigns for the value of arts and culture to the lives of all young Londoners, promotes practical ways that schools and other institutions can develop cultural opportunities, and works with arts and cultural partners to ensure the highest quality in work with children and young people
A New Direction is part of a national network of bridge organisations, funded by Arts Council England via the lottery to connect children and young people, schools and communities with art and culture.www.anewdirection.org.uk
info@anewdirection.org.uk
@A_New_Direction
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PalFest
The Palestine Festival of Literature (PalFest) was established in 2008 with the aim of bringing together Palestinian and International authors in contact with Palestinian audience. Every year it takes the form of a traveling festival, crossing the military checkpoints of the Israeli occupation that restrict Palestinian movement between cities. The festival includes free public events in the evenings and educational workshops with students in the day. For the festival's fifth year, our main festival was for the first time held in Gaza. Beyond the festival dates, PalFest continues its literary education programme in co-operation with its sister organisation, the Palestine Writing Workshop and via our new bilingual website: http://palfest.org
Past participants have included Suad Amiry, Mourid Barghouti, William Dalrymple, Roddy Doyle, Geoff Dyer, Esther Freud, Khaled Al Khamissi, Taha Mohammed Ali, Michael Palin, Raja Shehadeh and Alice Walker. Ahdaf Soueif is the Founding Chair and the festival patrons are Chinua Achebe, John Berger, Seamus Heaney, Philip Pullman, Emma Thompson and the late Mahmoud Darwish and Harold Pinter.
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Poetry Translation Centre
The Poetry Translation Centre was established in 2004 to translate contemporary poetry from Africa, Asia and Latin America to a high literary standard. Poetry thrives on translation: it’s impossible to imagine English poetry without it. From Chaucer, via Wyatt, Dryden and Pope, to Ezra Pound’s Cathay, translation has been its life-blood.But English poetry has yet to engage with the rich poetic traditions of the many languages now spoken in the UK; for Islamic communities in particular, poetry is a particularly significant art form. Our work aims to redress that deficiency. By making their poetry at home in English, we aim to celebrate the cultures of communities that are frequently neglected and abused in the UK, inviting them to play a vital role in British cultural life.
www.poetrytranslation.org
info@poetrytranslation.org
@poetrytranslate
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Pop Up
Pop Up is an exciting new social enterprise model for engaging diverse children, young people and families through literature and stories. The Pop Up model consists of a community engagement phase - with the school as the hub of each community – in which children and families read books, meet authors and create stories; followed by a free, public Festival of Stories, which is curated by authors, poets, storytellers and artists. Pop Up was winner of Runneymede European Community Project of the Year at the European Diversity Awards, September 2011, recognising "the outstanding contribution that community groups make to equality, diversity and inclusion".
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RAW
RAW in WAR aims to support women human rights defenders working in countries in war and conflict, and to help end abuse and persecution against them, as well as to strengthen their work in areas of conflict.
Founded in 2006 by Mariana Katzarova, RAW awards the annual Anna Politkovskaya Award, given to a woman human rights defender who stands up for the victims of conflict. They also grant the Natalia Estemirova Memorial Scholarship for a woman from an area torn by conflict to study human rights journalism in London.
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Readers International
Founded in 1984 and active in the UK since 1986, Readers International (RI) made its name by publishing works and authors that suffered political censorship or exile in their home country. Thus in the closing years of the Cold War, of apartheid, and of military terror in Latin America's Southern Cone, RI successfully brought international acclaim for the first time to major writers like Chilean Antonio Skármeta, Argentinian Marta Traba and the Czech writers Ivan Klima and Ludvik Vaculik. With Dorothy Connell still at the helm, Readers International has achieved twenty-five years of successful small press publishing in support of the free word.
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Spread the Word
Spread the Word provides support for writers of all levels - from networking events to publisher and agent talks, advice surgeries, mentoring and an online city of shared stories. They connect writers with the wider literature scene and offer a sustained relationship to talented writers for the development of their careers.
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The National Academy of Writing
The National Academy of Writing runs a London-based specialist course for committed writers seeking to publish a book-length work in either fiction or non-fiction. The Academy is led by practising writers and has extensive contacts in the publishing industry through the NAW Board of Directors, Patrons and Partners. NAW also provides unique writing events for literary festivals and University writing programmes.
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Vivarta
Vivarta is a start-up digital publishing and production house for free expression rights, developing creative investigative journalism and advocacy programmes in conflicted, fragile and closed states (vivarta.org). Our interests are free expression, digital media, cultures of change and the conflict zeitgeist. We also host digital R&D programmes in online publication, issue analysis and cultural production (vivarta.net), to support our own work and that of our partners.
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Wanderer Apps
Wanderer Apps is a collective of arts and technology professionals working to produce arts and culture focused on augmented reality and copyright-free image-recognition based apps.
Its mandate is to present collective global culture in a user-friendly way. Its apps are intended as totally immersive experiences because culture is a living, dynamic thing and deserves to be experienced as such.
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Writers’ Centre Norwich
Writers’ Centre Norwich is a literature development agency based in Norwich. They are interested in both the artistic and social impact of creative writing, and work with writers, readers and diverse communities. They run a wide range of ongoing and one-off projects and events including the Worlds Literature festival, a week of events, readings and discussion featuring writers from around the world; the Escalator Literature Competition; creative writing workshops; Summer Reads; the City of Refuge programme and Refugee Week.
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The Writers’ Guild of Great Britain
The Writers' Guild of Great Britain is a trade union, affiliated to the TUC, and represents writers' interests in film, TV, radio, theatre, books and video games. Formed in 1958 as the Screenwriters' Guild, it gradually extended into all areas of freelance writing activity and copyright protection.