Foundation Programme 2024 in Collaboration with the Irish Writers Centre

Published 18/04/2024

 

We’re delighted to be collaborating with the Irish Writers Centre once again this year for the Foundation Programme, a writing programme designed for six emerging writers who are resident in the Dublin City Council area and who are from a background typically underrepresented in the arts in Ireland.

The call for application is now open, with a deadline of May 22nd, and full details and submission guidelines are available over on the Irish Writers Centre website. 

The Foundation Programme has two aims:

  1. Create a learning community who will work together to grow into their careers as writers, looking to each other as supportive peers on their respective journeys
  2. Equip participants with the tools and knowledge needed to launch their writing careers

The Foundation Programme is a collaborative programme created by the Irish Writers Centre, designed to take six emerging writers through a mediated process of training and provide them with supports.

This programme includes:

  • A one-to-one session with the programme writer-mentor. After being chosen for the programme, participating writers will submit a short piece of writing to the mentor for creative feedback. This piece of writing can be up to 3,000 words max. or up to five poems, no more than 200 lines in total. It can be of any genre or form and doesn’t have to be a completed or published piece (i.e. it can be part of a larger work)
  • A place on an Irish Writers Centre creative writing course
  • Foundation Day: An in-person day of talks by industry professionals at the Irish Writers Centre (located on Parnell Square, Dublin 1)
  • Peer support: Participating writers are encouraged to create a WhatsApp group, or similar, in order to support each other during the programme and to foster a community; they are also encouraged to meet in the Irish Writers Centre during the programme
  • Feedback: the Irish Writers Centre always strives to make their programmes better, and so they ask participants to provide valuable feedback about how they found the experience; this will be via an online form sent out when the programme has finished
  • A performance opportunity at Dublin Book Festival in November 2024

Head over to the Irish Writers Centre website for full details including eligibility criteria, key dates to be aware of, and complete guidelines on how to apply.

Featured below are the Foundation Programme 2023 Awardees.

© 2022 Dublin Book Festival. All Rights Reserved.