Teaching & Facilitation

“Vicky is an exceptional tutor of creative writing. She creates a space in which every writer is able to achieve their best and feel their work is valued and important. Her teaching supports and encourages beginners and advances experienced writers. Her expertise experience as a tutor and mentor over many years has guided many emerging writers to significant award and publication success. Vicky is a pleasure to work with, supporting her co-tutors as fully as her students. Passionate and generous, she creates innovative and engaging workshops which build enjoyment, skill and confidence in writing, and which, evident from numerous anthologies and award-winners, generate spectacular creative work.” Poet, Jonathan Edwards

For 24 years, Vicky has worked as a creative facilitator of others through projects, courses, workshops and work experience placements. Much of this work has focused on the creative development of young people (14 to 30) and spans teaching, mentoring, training and supervising (on creative work experiences). She’s taught people of all ages, backgrounds and abilities and delivered projects in a wide variety of contexts and settings including colleges, community centres, libraries and galleries.

For the past 14 years, Vicky has delivered diverse writing projects for young people for various organisations and initiatives. Since 2007, she has run creative writing groups in South Yorkshire delivering regular workshops across a wide range of writing forms for young writers aged 14 to 19s (Signposts/Writing Yorkshire & since 2016, significantly via Hive South Yorkshire).

Writing Teaching/Facilitation & Mentoring  – bodies include:

  • Hive Young Writers Network
  • Arvon
  • The Poetry Society
  • The Poetry Business
  • NHS Foundation Trust
  • Apples & Snakes
  • Off the Shelf Festival of Words
  • Wakefield Literature Festival
  • The Writing Squad
  • Sheffield Hallam University
  • Poetry Wales

Vicky began teaching in the autumn of 1998 after finished a Degree in Fine Art. She cut her teeth as a facilitator and teacher for many years at Site Gallery in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, working with a wide range of community groups to widen participation, build partnerships and deliver workshops, projects and courses in darkroom/digital photography and multimedia arts.

Teaching across: creative writing (her focus for the last 14 years), and visual arts and visual literacy, darkroom and digital photograph, animation, filmmaking, graphic design, illustration, web design, creative writing, journalism and radio, Vicky has also delivered a wide variety of training to school teachers, youth workers, librarians and youth apprenticeships.

 Recent workshop feedback:

Brilliant, brilliant workshop, Vicky. I loved every second of it! Didn’t even pause for chocolate! I’ve been to loads over lockdown and yours was the standout highlight of them all! Can’t wait for the next one : )Thank you so much – Katharine G
Thank you for leading the workshop with such good humour and skill.  I enjoyed it a lot and have the germ of a poem. Your prompt about groups made me think of those amazing clock makers obsessed with measuring time and dreaming up and constructing the most astonishing computer machines 400 years ago. Anne B
Huge thanks Vicky for a brilliant workshop just what I needed and beyond my expectations. – Lorraine O

Teaching qualifications:
Post-Graduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) – 14+ Further Education Teaching [University of Huddersfield 2011-2013] City & Guilds Certificates in FE Teaching – Levels 1 & 2 [Sheffield College 2002 & 2003]

Much of her teaching work has been informal but she has taught formally on the following qualifications:
BTEC National Diploma, ASDAN, OCNs, NCFE, Arts Award

Poet | Editor | Mentor | Educator | Creative Practitioner

British/Welsh poet, editor & creative educator based in Sheffield, South Yorkshire (Neurodivergent, working class, passionate about developing young writers)