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Community Writer in Residence

Community Writer in Residence

Project details

A 12 week programme funded by ACNI through the Irish Writers’ Centre Dublin. My residency with The Rainbow Project in Derry led to the creation of the zine and a podcast Writing Rainbows.

Showcase 17th May 2018

Many thanks to the funders, sponsors and supporters

Arts Council of Northern Ireland

Irish Writers’ Centre Dublin

Unison LGBT

The Rainbow Project

Writing Rainbows

The project was guided by the needs of the creative writing group already established within The Rainbow Project, Derry. They wanted someway to showcase their writing in a way that could be archived. We planned out the making of a zine and a podcast. Both ideas were intended to be self-sustaining outlets. The zine, once published, could be sold and from this a second issue could be made. In 2019, this happened and a second issue of Writing Rainbows was released. Both were released to coincide with LGBT Awareness Week to highlight the importance of LGBTQ+ voices.

One of the things that we discussed was the issue of expectation on LGBTQ+ voices to talk about issues specifically linked to this identity. We approached the zine with this in mind mixing these issues of identity with the perspective that the lens in which we view the world and writing is always coloured by our identity without having to be explicit.

As the project was to include pieces already written, a large part of the process was looking at how we were going to curate the zine, the structure and layout, designing and building textures to enhance the visuals. Some of the participants produced artwork to be included in the printed zine.