Bramblethorne Writers

Bramblesthorne Writers began 1989 as a group for parents based at Brambles Farm Primary School and serving  the Thorntree and Brambles Farm areas of East Middlesbrough.

The initiative came from Eileen Moran, then head of Brambles Farm School and the East Middlesbrough Language

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 Project, which, to quote from Rebecca O'Rourke's Written on the Margins - Creative Writing and adult education in Cleveland - Leeds University - 1994 page 2

" Sometimes projects designed with children in mind ended up serving adults' needs, as was the case with Bramblethorne Writers.The original impetus came from a project designed to involve parents in boosting their children's reading and writing skills, but it quickly became apparent that parents wanted to develop their own creative writing. This was an eye opener for teachers :

'If there was one,there could be other talented writers in our midst. In the past we'd only considered that some parents would benefit from adult literacy classes. Whether illiteracy was a majority or minority problem we simply didn't know. We assumed it to be a problem of the majority. We were about to discover something that was to change our attitudes and raise our level of expectation.' "

Bramblethorne 2

Eileen Moran was introduced to Trev Teasdel by Community Arts Middlesbrough at the Pavilion in North Ormesby. They had outlined Trevor's work with Teesside Writers Workshop, Outlet and the WEA Creative Writing courses and Eileen invited Trevor to a Creative Writing workshop she had organised for the parents at Brambles Farm Primary School with North East Writer - Wendy Robertson  Wendy took a group of parents through a short story writing workshop and gave them loads of encouragement.

After the workshop Trevor brought in WEA Tutor Organiser Maude Warwick to discuss the possibilities of Trevor running a Creative Writing course at Brambles Farm school for the parents. As a result Trevor tutored at course at the school from 1989 to 1991 with Andy Croft taking over in 1992 when Leeds University Adult Education took over as the provider from WEA.

The Bramblesthorne Writers group formed at the the first term with Trevor as an informal writers group alongside or in-between formal courses and produced with Trevor their first anthology - Bramblesthorne Writers - An Anthology of Short Stoires and Verse and in 1992 produced their second anthology with Andy Croft - Grimm Tales.

In addition, in the autumn of 1989 Eileen Moran asked Trevor to take part as a Writer In Residence in the East

Brambles in Outlet pt2

Brambles in Outlet

 Middlesbrough Language Project's Book Week, delivering workshops in various East Middlesbrough schools, including Brambles Farm Primary, Caldicotts Primary, Thorntree Primary, St Alphonsus, North Ormseby and others in the area over Book Week. At Brambles Farm, the parent writers joined in with the kids.

The Bramblethorn Writers had a double page in the very last issue of Outlet and joined in the Write Around Festival.

More info and articles will be provided via linked pdf files shortly.