Like all organisations, our response to the COVID-19 outbreak is evolving continually as we monitor advice from the Government and Public Health England.
Our priority is the health, safety and wellbeing of Spread the Word permanent and freelance staff, our writers and artists, Trustees, programme participants and the communities we work with. This page will be continually updated with new information as and when we have it.
All staff are now working out of the office. This means that we will not have access to our office phone. Please email us instead (hello@spreadtheword.org.uk). We are working it out as we go; so we may not get it right all the time. Please bear with us.
We are continually working on how the pandemic will impact our work.
We have decided that our regular programme of masterclasses, workshops and events at Ideas Store Whitechapel scheduled between now until June will be postponed. We will pay all our workshop leaders and event speakers to play our small role in supporting them. Our online courses and one to ones (delivered remotely) will go ahead as planned. We have been in touch with all people who booked places at our live events that are now postponed and offered refunds.
Our London Short Story Prize 2019 Anthology launch event scheduled for 23 April at the Peckham Pelican, will also not be taking place. We are currently planning how we can celebrate the writers, their stories and the anthology.
We are postponing This Is Our Place, our partnership nature writing project with London Wildlife Trust for a year – we hope workshops will take place in June 2021.
Our Room 9, open to writers each Thursday, will be closed from this week until further notice.
With regards to our other areas of work, we are currently planning what we will do. When we have updates or changes to our programmes, we will email the core people involved, and then update this page.
We’ll be posting further updates on our social media (Twitter, Facebook and Instagram) and via our newsletter.
This is a challenging time for all of us. We will continue to work to support communities of writers, whilst prioritising people and taking care of each other. Look after yourselves and stay safe.
Published 17 March 2020
Updated 18 March 2020