Higher Education

Leeds Trinity University run an undergraduate Creative Writing and English programme.

They host the annual Leeds Trinity University Writers’ Festival and regular open mic events. 

Leeds Beckett University runs BA (Hons) English Literature, BA (Hons) English Literature and Creative Writing and BA (Hons) Creative Writing degrees, as well as MAs in Creative Writing and in English Literature, producing around 80 graduates a year.

The university also offers PhDs in English Literature and/ or Creative Writing. The English and Creative Writing team includes critically acclaimed, internationally published poets, fiction and screen writers and world-leading/ internationally recognised researchers/ academics. Thriving, established partnerships include Peepal Tree Press, the Leeds Library, DOMA (David Oluwale Memorial Association), Renaissance One.

All students can undertake employability-related modules with external partners. Students run a Spoken Word society, which organises regular open mic events, and send a team to the national UniSlam Competition in Birmingham every year. A Leeds Beckett student poet won UniSlam in 2022.

University of Leeds currently runs an undergraduate joint BA honours English and Creative Writing (120 students), which has been running for four years and which is growing year on year. This year they will launch a new MA in Creative Writing which will include poetry, fiction and life writing this year (and will replace the current Creative Writing and Critical Life MA). It is successfully recruiting international students in addition to domestic students and using the writers who have come through the school over many decades as a way of attracting international interest. There are also writers working at Leeds University in Languages, Cultures and Societies and in the Centre for Lifelong Learning. Students here transfer back and forth between modules in the school and in the Centre for Lifelong Learning. This year the university ran an event involving students from creative writing and Lifelong Learning at Leeds Lit Fest. Its strategic plan involves making courses available online or outside teaching hours to more students on an outreach basis, and to grow a national and international reach from Leeds.

Leeds University of the Arts runs a BA in Creative Writing, and as a University of the Arts, encourages cross-artform collaboration among students. Many of the cohort are first-generation university attenders, often from West Yorkshire and working-class backgrounds. It is a relatively new course (four years old), and the emphasis is on practice rather than theory. Students are also involved in the city’s vibrant spoken-word scene, including with site-specific events outfit Bone Down.  

Caitlin Stobie (Leeds University), Sean Gregory (Leeds Arts University) and Alison Taft (Leeds Beckett University) who lead the undergraduate courses in their institutions are all relatively new in post and are interested in collaborating with each other.  

Each of the universities has relationships with cultural organisations in the city, but all of them would like to build more, and would value structures to aid the development of relationships. Two of the universities mentioned Covid as having a significant effect on their institutions and their outward-facing work. Natural collaborations were suspended and often froze and are just emerging out of that period now. All three universities noted that access to internal financial support, beyond a modest scale of contributions or funding, was an issue for them in developing or sustaining relationships with cultural partners.  

Some universities are interested in developing partnerships to shape and support their impact agenda. Support in-kind comes in the form of new ways of engaging or maximising capacity: Caitlin Stobie is developing a practice research group to look at ways in which researchers can engage with local organisations to apply for grants to undertake research. John Whale at Leeds University pointed out that, in addition to students, there is a community of writers based around the university, and they could join up with other writing communities in the city to expand professional development opportunities for local writers. Leeds University of the Arts has said they would be glad to offer space to support cultural provision in the city.  

Leeds University runs the Cultural Institute, which acts as a bridge between the university and cultural sector. They have major partnerships with Opera North and the Leeds International Piano Competition. In terms of literature, they have a research partnership with Ilkley Literature Festival, and they are looking to diversify their partnerships in the city. Leeds Beckett were working on projects with Leeds 2023 and have a long-running relationship with the organisation Remember Oluwale. None of the universities that we approached had developed relationships with Channel 4 or local broadcast media, but it was noted that this might have been impacted by Channel 4 moving to Leeds during the pandemic.  

In relation to events, all three mentioned their involvement in Leeds Lit Fest, but most of the events that they were involved with are student-run, and related to their courses, rather than activity aimed at, or available, to the public.  

“I also feel (my views here) that Higher Education and Further Education need to link up to industry much more ambitiously in terms of practical, job-seeking strategies and connections to producers and broadcasters who are essential for the writing pipeline.” Organisation  

Leeds University’s creative writing offer is starting to develop more employability focused elements to their modules, and all Leeds University students have the option to do an industry year, so this may be an opportunity for the cultural sector. Leeds University of the Arts has a focus on careers, with guest speakers from industry coming to talk to students about their jobs, or ways to support yourself as a writer. They also have an active career service.  

With this degree of practice in the field of creative writing and related subjects, with excellent libraries and archives, and with ambitions to work more widely with cultural partners, the university sector has a great deal of potential when it comes to supporting and contributing in a dynamic way to the development and celebration of literature and writing in Leeds, and so providing more employment pathways and creative experiences for their students and graduates.