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I’m David Rogers, and I’m the Head of the School of Humanities at Kingston. I’ve
been in Kingston about 20 years now. I originally came from America. I did my PhD at Rutgers
University in New Jersey. I did my PhD in English Literature and I specialised in southern
literature, particularly William Faulkner, who strangely enough is – I never quite
understand this – is underappreciated in England, much to the loss of the English reading
public I’d say.
The Kingston Writing School is just now forming. We decided we were going to have a unique
site called the Kingston Writing School, almost as a school within a school – within the
School of Humanities; but probably even more widely than that across the Faculty of Arts
and Social Sciences.
Because we realise that although we run a large number of individual writing courses,
such as journalism and publishing and English literature and creative writing, that actually
what we do at Kingston is much larger than that, and potential students or writers who
might want to become involved with us wouldn’t really realise what environment we’d created
at Kingston if we didn’t signal it through a specific writing school, and the aim of
the Writing School is to show therefore students and writers that their experience here is
more than the sum of the individual parts of each of the discreet courses.
So that if someone coming in, for instance into the postgraduate course in journalism,
somebody’s going to get a specific instruction in journalism. They will pick up the skills
to become a professional journalist, but they’ll be doing that in the context of a number of
other postgraduate students who will be taking creative writing courses, publishing courses,
English literature courses – and the nature of our provision here means that journalist
students in this case would be able to take advantage of extracurricular activities that
go on in creative writing – any number of writers who might come, any number of guest
speakers who might come in, they might be able to take advantage of master classes in
publishing studies. So that the experience here would be richer I think... well I know...
would be richer than it would be if they were coming into an individual journalism course
that’s set outside of such a wide range of British postgraduate courses; and of course
the same thing would apply to creative writers coming in or publishing studies students coming
in.
In fact we run I think probably the only Creative Writing and Publishing Studies joint MA, and
the students there get an insight not only into the publishing industry, but what it
is like to be a writer because they’re writers themselves; and I think in most cases that’s
unique to the Writing School as we imagine it, but also the Writing School is meant to
reach out to professional writers who can come in and be associated with us, not necessarily
on the conventional academic contracts so to speak, but to be involved in ways which
are mutually beneficial.
I’ve lost count of the number of writers who associate with us who have told me that
the old cliché about writers is true – it is a lonely business and they like opportunities
to get out, engage with students and with other staff through a network of writers to
get a perspective on their own writing, but also to give them some light relief in some
sense to the writing that they’re doing at home.
So we have a range of writers in residence with us, and journalists in residence with
us, and we have a Publishing and Studies Senior Advisory Board from industry whose incentive
is exactly the same. They work day-to-day in a professional industry and they feel as
if they need to give something back to students, not by being a formal higher education department,
but as being adjunct so to speak, so that we feel as if we have a really rich mix of
academic writers who also combine their academic life with their own publishing life but also
jobbing professionals in all these areas, and it gives our students a chance to see
inside the professions that they’re aspiring to, but yet supported by the structure of
a conventional academic programme, and I like to think that’s unique.
I know it’s ambitious and we want it to be ambitious which is why we’re launching
the Kingston Writing School, both organisationally for the long term but also initially in May
at the RSA, so that we can announce to the world in effect that we are trying to create
a vision here of a community of writers that is more inclusive, more far reaching than
the normal academic environment might be.
We put a great deal of stock in our alumni. We value them quite a lot and we have now
created our own alumni website so that they would have immediate access, and they will
be always seen to be part of the Kingston Writing School – because the early students
which we’ve had (in journalism, in publishing and in creative writing) are directly responsible
for our successes. Not only have they gone out in publishing, for instance, or in journalism
and got very wonderful jobs, but we’ve also had a number of our writers published in creative
writing, we’ve had a number of our English literature graduates go on to get academic
jobs or to teach in secondary or further education; and without their successes I don’t think
future students would be as inclined to pick Kingston over any number of other writing
schools.
We like to think that our environment here, not only internally but our situation close
to London, is also a huge plus and we do find that a lot of our alumni stay in the area
or they gravitate into London and then they come back to us, not only to take part in
some of our extracurricular activities, but in some cases to take up more formalised jobs
with us and also in some cases to come back as professional writers or journalists or
publishers and tell us about their experience.