Tea and Testimony inspire Creativity

As part of Explore your Archives Week  2015, we held a creative writing workshop on Friday 22nd November. About 15 enthusiastic writers joined Dr Emma Filtness, Lecturer in Creative Writing at Brunel University, as she led us through a process to utilize archives for inspiration. The theme for this year’s Explore Your Archive Week was Tea and Testimony, so I found some tea related archives (not difficult at the RAS) to stimulate creativity. These included:

Japanese theatre prints:

Tea picking photographs:

The Korean Art of Tea:

And a mystery photograph:

For those who were not particularly inspired by tea, there were always the paintings and other items on display in the Reading Room to whet their creative appetites. The evening was a relaxed and friendly occasion inspiring both seasoned writers and those new to creative writing. These photos show some of the people taking time to interact with the material.

We hope to be able to publish some of the work on a later blog once people have had time to work on their pieces. But even on the night some shared what they had begun – it was exciting to see a whole range of ideas beginning to form. I would like to say a big thank you to Emma for giving up her time to lead the event.

Our next events at the RAS are the December lectures, which unusually fall in the same week. On Tuesday 8th December at 1830, we welcome John Earle from the University of Plymouth who will speak on “British Vice-Consul and Local Hero: Nicholas Loney and a Sweeter Life on a 19th Century Philippine Island”. This is the next in our Fresh Perspectives Series. On Thursday 10th December at 1800, RAS Council Member,  Kaveh Bakhtiar will lecture on “The British Mosque: fragments of an alternative architecture” as part of the RAS Lecture Series. We welcome you to join us at these events.