Deadline to apply: 5 May 2025
Cohort 1 dates:
28 June – 2 August 2025 (6 sessions)
Saturday afternoons, online, 15.00-17.30 British Summer Time
Cohort 2 dates:
6 September – 12 October 2025 (6 sessions)
Saturday afternoons, online, 15.00-17.30 British Summer Time
We cannot know for whom the text will become a riot, a notice, a wormhole, or mote.
—‘On Editing’, Lauren Berlant & Kathleen Stewart (2020)
Join us for a new series of weekly online sessions exploring new approaches to writing. Sessions will involve sharing and developing new work, communal readings and conversation.
This programme is aimed at writers of all forms and artists with text-based practices. We welcome participants of all levels of experience, from all backgrounds and across all disciplines.
Together we will travel towards the edges of language, reading and responding to texts across genres and forms with a focus on formal innovation and experimentation. Participants will be involved in assembling a body of shared resources and plotting disparate reference points, mapping new constellations of materials and influences. Sessions will be structured around the sharing of participants’ work, alongside collective and independent exercises, group readings and open discussion, with the purpose of generating new approaches and fostering future collaborations. By paying close attention
to the diverse processes at work in our writing we aim to excavate new methodologies and to envision new ambitious compositions of theory and practice.
Sessions will be facilitated by the FIELDNOTES editorial team (Elaine Tam and Bella Marrin) and led by the interests and initiatives of the group. Our aim is to support a discursive and non-hierarchical learning model, participants will be actively involved in building the reading list and shaping the structure of the programme, with session formats evolving responsively.
Participants are warmly welcomed from all time zones, but please check the conversion to your local time zone. We ask that you make sure you have capacity to commit to all 6 sessions and the required preparatory work when you apply. The preparatory reading and assignments to be done between sessions will amount to 2–3 hours per week.
Indicative reading list
Surge, Etel Adnan
After the Sun, Jonas Eika
Plans for Sentences, Renee Gladman
Last Words from Montmartre, Qiu Miaojin
On Breathing, Franco 'Bifo' Berardi
My Life, Lyn Hejinian
Float, Anne Carson
A Handbook of Disappointed Fate, Anne Boyer
Dictee, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha
The Boiled in Between, Helen Marten
Fever, J.M.G. Le Clézio
A Life Full of Holes, Driss Ben Hamed Charhadi
Access
Sessions will take place online using Zoom, you will need a good wifi connection and a working webcam to take part. Sessions will take two and a half hours including some time for independent work and a short break. The programme requires active participation and you will need to feel comfortable engaging with screen-based exercises and conversations. No technical or digital expertise will be required, no specialist software will be used during the session. Please let us know if you have any access requirements so we can make sure to accommodate them.
We encourage applications from artists and writers who face cultural, social, physical or economic barriers in accessing opportunities in the arts, participants without formal qualifications, and those from underrepresented groups.
Selection
Group size is limited to 16 participants. Selection will be based on the quality and relevance of the application, not the publishing record or profile of applicants. Selection is not based on ability to pay more or less. We will prioritise applicants who are not currently engaged in other educational programmes (formal or informal) and those who have not taken part in previous FIELDNOTES schools.
Pricing
This programme is offered on a Pay What You Can basis. You are welcome to decide what fee you are able to pay but we offer the following tiers for guidance. There are no tangible ‘perks’ on offer at the top tier price but we ask you to consider the level that feels appropriate to your situation. Tiers are on a self-assessment basis – it's entirely up to you which you select. Please note that up-front payment or an agreed payment schedule is required to confirm your place. Fieldnotes is a registered charity, all income goes towards supporting our work, covering our running costs, allowing us to offer fair pay to those involved and enabling us to keep our programmes low cost and accessible.
The tier prices are as follows:
£240 (£40/week) Solidarity
If you are financially secure, you are comfortably able to afford modest luxuries like overseas holidays or to set money aside in savings.
£150 (£25/week) Standard
If you have a reliable source of income that more than covers your basic financial needs, you don't have to worry about the costs of nights out.
£60 (£10/week) Low Income
If you work for minimum wage or below the living wage.
FREE – Unwaged
For those without a reliable source of income who struggle to cover their basic
monthly living costs.
About
Fieldnotes is an artist-run publishing project based in Newham in east London. We produce a print journal twice a year and a public programme of workshops, radio broadcasts, screenings and readings. Founded in 2020, FIELDNOTES aims to promote and support non-conforming creative practices that pioneer new cultural forms. FIELDNOTES is a non-profit organisation and a registered charity (no. 1192461).
www.fieldnotes.site
