The Scottish Artists Union delivers a programme of bespoke workshops, courses and events throughout the year. The Learning Programme creates opportunities for all members to undertake training to improve their sector skills, address the barriers to freelance work, and participate fully as workers within the sector.
How to Write is a residential course for Scottish Artists Union members at Cove Park from 13th – 15th May funded by Scottish Union Learning. Participants will learn approaches and methods to find a language to support and represent their practice with artist and writer Maria Howard. The weekend will explore different strategies to be able to adapt and construct forms of effective language and communication while spending time together in a relaxed and social environment.
Maria Howard is a British-Italian writer and artist based in Glasgow. Her practice is largely concerned with the links between memory, water and place and how they intersect with the climate crisis. This is explored through her critical-creative writing and her experiments with ‘wild’ clay that aim to locate a connection to place through sculpture and printmaking. In October she will be starting a DFA in the University of Glasgow’s Creative Writing department entitled ‘From source to firth: witnessing the climate crisis through individual and collective memories of the Clyde’. In 2019 she was shortlisted for the Fitzcarraldo Editions Essay Prize and received a Gillian Purvis Trust Award for New Writing. In 2021 she graduated from the Art Writing MLitt at Glasgow School of art, was commended for her submission to the UEA New Forms Award and won the Yellow Paper Prize for Art Writing. She is an associate editor for Nothing Personal magazine and also works as a freelance writer and translator.
Image: Courtesy of Lauren Printy Currie, 2020
