Song of Myself: Bid-Writing Workshop for Poets

Public funding can be key to sustaining and developing your creative practice, but even for a seasoned writer, applying to grants can feel like a maze.

Part creative writing workshop and part fundraising seminar, this session helps poets to channel their own creative flair into the world of funding applications, be it for an Arts Council Project Grant, Developing Your Creative Practice grant, or even an application to one of the many trusts and foundations out there.

Led by New Poets Collective alum and arts fundraiser Oliver Fox, this hybrid workshop looks at techniques and approaches to writing about yourself and your career as an artist, how to build a fundable project proposal, and how to understand the shifting priorities of public funders.

And with creative writing exercises along the way exploring self-reflective and biographical writing, maybe you’ll end up with your next poem, too.

Held on Zoom, this interactive workshop is low pressure, fun and open to writers at any level. It also gives participants the opportunity to share their ideas and writing.

Oliver Fox is a poet and arts administrator from London. He is the senior fundraiser at Ministry of Stories, a children’s creative writing charity in Hoxton. He was a member of the 2022/2023 Southbank Centre New Poets Collective. His debut pamphlet, Haptics, was published by Broken Sleep Books in 2023.

With generous support from the TS Eliot Foundation