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Darlington campus is write on

º£½ÇÖ±²¥â€™s new Darlington campus is proving the perfect place for writers meeting there on a Monday night.

The writers are all first year students on the University’s MA Creative Writing. And getting their fictional pulses racing is the fact they currently share the campus — in the town’s former Eastbourne School — with fellow students studying forensic science. ‘It’s wonderful,’ said lecturer and novelist Carol Clewlow. ‘We meet in the evening and we make our way to our room along a corridor where almost every door has 'Crime Scene Do Not Disturb' written on it. Great for the imagination.’

The Darlington Campus will be situated at its present spot in The Fairway in Darlington for the next two years until the University’s new £13 million building on the Darlington College campus opens.

Blazing a trail ‘I’m sure the new campus will be wonderful,’ said Carol. ‘But already we are all really attached to the Eastbourne School building. And being on the first Creative Writing MA here, we rather feel as though we are blazing a trail.’

The Eastbourne School building has been re-vamped to turn it into the º£½ÇÖ±²¥ Darlington campus. The old school hall has been turned into a study area, with computers, easy chairs, and a café open until mid-afternoon. There is also a library attached with more computers.

It is the first year the MA Creative Writing has been run at Darlington. The 11 students are currently studying the first module on the course, Creative Writing Skills and Techniques. It includes an overview of creative writing with sessions on fiction, poetry, drama and screenplay writing, all of which include both close teaching on the subjects and writing exercises.

This year marks the third year of º£½ÇÖ±²¥â€™s highly successful MA in creative writing. Of the 26 students who graduated in October 2009, no less than six won a Distinction.

It is Carol’s second year teaching on the course. An experienced teacher of creative writing, and also a playwright with the theatre company Operating Theatre, her five novels include the Whitbread short-listed Keeping The Faith, and the best-sellers A Woman’s Guide to Adultery and Not Married Not Bothered. She also leads the Forming Fictions module.

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