Creative Future partners with Zealous to run their Creative Future Writers’ Award, using us to take submissions and judge entries. I got to chat to deputy director Matt Freidson, who has worked to support underrepresented people for twenty years, working with refugees and asylum seekers, on housing estates and in community development. We spoke about the purpose of Creative Future, how they support those who are underrepresented, and their experience of using a submission management platform.
What does Creative Future do and what is your role within it?
Creative Future is an arts diversity organisation supporting underrepresented people to unlock their talent, overcome barriers to access, and thrive creatively and professionally. Our work has two strands: arts, health & wellbeing, which facilitates networks, training, and connections between artists and the health/wellbeing sector, and our literature programme. We run a range of online and face-to-face writing workshops across the country, including our annual writers’ development day at the Southbank Centre in London. We have regional Writers In Residence, where they’re given full rein to explore their hometowns, places, people, and what interests them creatively. Finally, our flagship programme is the Creative Future Writers’ Award, which will be in its 12th year in 2025: a free to enter competition in poetry, fiction and creative non-fiction for all underrepresented, unpublished writers in the UK. We’re unique in the breadth of people we work with and the depth in which we work with them.
Alot of your work focuses on those who are underrepresented. What does ‘underrepresented’ mean to you?
All of our work is with talented creatives who face barriers to opportunities due to mental health issues, physical health/disability, sensory impairment, learning disabilities, neurodivergence, substance misuse, survivors, people from working class backgrounds, people from the LGBTQIA+ community, and people from Black, Asian, traveller, mixed heritage or other global majority backgrounds. Most of those we work with report two or more challenges. We have never turned anyone away for being ‘not underrepresented enough.’
You used a different platform before joining Zealous. What was your experience with moving to a new platform? Did you have any concerns?
We originally had entries submitted directly through our website. Using Zealous eliminated the collating of entries and entrants and downloading of everyone’s work. Our concerns were mostly around using a third party website, its reliability and whether it would justify its cost.
How did you tackle these concerns?
Zealous has been great at all of these, and working with us on an ongoing basis to make their portal as useful as possible, taking on board our requests and suggestions.
The Creative Future Writers’ Award is an annual development programme for talented writers from a wealth of backgrounds. What can writers gain from applying?
The fifteen winners receive £20k in prizes, including mentoring, courses, guides, memberships and development. Winners are also published in our print and e-book anthology alongside our prominent guest judges, and read their work at our annual showcase at the Southbank Centre as part of the London Literature Festival. The anthology is also offered to a list of literary agents, and we connect them with winners they’re interested in potentially representing. Winners are offered long-term support, opportunities and development—we stay in touch with them for as long as they need. All of our workshops are taught by past Award winners, as are all of our Writers In Residence. To date, 1/3 have gone on to publish books, and we expect that number to keep rising.
Is there anything you are currently working on or something you would like to share with our community?
We are looking at how best to improve the writers’ resources on our website, to make them more comprehensive, more navigable and more accessible. We’ll also be running a crowdfunder this year to keep the Writers’ Award free to enter—we know having no entry fee lowers the barrier for those who lack confidence, are new to writing and entering competitions, as well as struggling financially.
You can find out more about Creative Future on their website and Instagram.
Matt has published over twenty short stories in literary journals and anthologies, and his book is available here.
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