Life Lines

When storytelling draws from lived experience, how can narratives become meaningful and generative, not just inward- (or backward-) looking? This workshop, which stems from the Lore & Ware Situated Practice unit at the Royal College of Art, is an opportunity for practitioners across disciplines to engage with the process, pitfalls and potential of life writing with author Jeremy Atherton Lin. Jeremy's debut book, Gay Bar, a New York Times Editors' Choice and Guardian Book of the Week, fuses memoir and cultural criticism, 'folding time' to explore links between place and identity and between fleeting observations and social histories. Jeremy will share strategies of matching form to content, researching, synthesising and self-editing. Participants will explore and develop approaches that are liberating — but also focusing. Everything may be possible... but ultimately creation demands we do something. A lot of the work lies in the decision-making. How can we make assured choices (and remain flexible)? The workshop is about balancing practical solutions with unimpeded curiosity.