Most visitors to this website will be aware that New Writing North has been working with Newcastle University to raise money to create a centre for literary activity in Newcastle under the name of the Northern Writers' Centre. We launched a campaign in autumn 2007 to raise the £2.5m which was necessary to renovate the Claremont Building. Since then we have been unable to achieve the funding needed to see the project to completion. The economic climate and changes in Government and European funding have both contributed to this lack of success. From mid-2008 the project partners explored the possibilities of using other buildings on campus as a base for the Centre. This did not prove possible and in February this year New Writing North’s board made the difficult decision to draw a line under the capital aspirations of the NWC project.

The NWC project had been a long and substantial commitment for NWN and for the School of English at Newcastle University and both partners are keen to ensure that the project work that began under the auspices of the NWC continues both together and independently. This work includes our large-scale writing in schools project, Even Better Writers, our collaborative work with Stevie Ronnie to create a wiki website to compile the North East’s literary history, and the delivery of events such as the Common Book project.

We would like to express our gratitude to all the NWC patrons and project sponsors and to the writers and members of the public who supported the development of the project.

Here at New Writing North we will be announcing some exciting new partnerships and programmes of work over the next few weeks and we are energised by our new venue and the opportunities that the space will enable. Newcastle University is developing a new Centre for the Literary Arts on campus to continue the work that it does in the field of creative writing and we wish them well with this project.