Oct 16th 2008

London Lit Plus: The Future

Two years ago, I co-founded London Lit Plus, an open literary festival for London. We’ve had two excellent years, but with all kinds of commitments, it would in no way be right to attempt to keep running it in my somewhat useless and slapdash fashion, to the inevitable detriment of the events.

But it’s a wonderful thing, and I still believe in the concept of the open festival, and I’d love to see it continue. So I’m appealing for someone or someones to take it on, with full blessing and support.

If you’re interested, read this for…

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Jul 4th 2008

London Lit Plus 2008

London Lit Plus, the literary festival I set up last year, kicks off for the second time tomorrow. I’d love to see you there.

After a slow start, we’ve gathered up a bunch of really fantastic events. There’s a great string of events for classic London authors like Derek Raymond and Chris Petit, walks across the territories of Patrick Hamilton and W.B. Yeats, live readings and poetry from Liar’s League, Spoonful of Poison, Legend Press (at Speaker’s Corner!) and the Stuckists, a great kids and comics event from the DFC,…

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May 20th 2008

Funding gap, knowledge gap

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I’ve been spending the day listen to friends twitter from NESTA’s Innovation Edge conference at the South Bank, and an Arts Council England summit on the future of literature just round the corner. NESTA was established by the government in 1998 with an endowment of £250 million. Just last week, ACE announced £16.5 million of Lottery funding for the Southbank Centre, the same week I discovered that my full-price membership of that institution no longer lets me take in a friend for free.

Meanwhile, the slash and burn of the literature sector continues (others too:…

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May 3rd 2008

London Lit Plus

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I’m very pleased to say that my open-source literary festival, London Lit Plus, is happening again this year.

Full details at londonlitplus.com, with plenty more to come. Head over, check it out, start spreading the word – and think about holding an event!

Jul 17th 2007

Lit+ : Open-Sourcing the Literary Festival

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Sorry it’s been quiet around here. With London Lit Plus in full swing for the last couple of weeks, and a new job, it’s been a little hectic. However, we do have one important announcement.

Lit+ (litplus.com) is a new booktwo.org project: taking the London Lit Plus ethos – an open-access, distributed literary festival – and turning it into a template that anyone can use to set up their own festival. We’ll be using the same kind of tools – the power of the internet and free software – to create a resource for all….

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Jun 5th 2007

London Lit Plus

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I love it when a plan comes together. A Sunday evening chat on Brick Lane about ways of opening up/gatecrashing/subverting the upcoming London Literature Festival has led very quickly to the creation of London Lit Plus, an open-access festival to showcase the best of London’s literary scenes:

London Lit Plus (LL+) is an open festival, which means anyone can participate, and anyone can hold an event. All you have to do to be included is to submit your event, and we’ll add it to the list on this website. We want to showcase all the wonderful

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